This article is actually about the definition of ‘drunk and incapable’. (Incapable of what, I always wondered. Very capable of talking gibberish incessantly; Completely incapable of making sense or not slurring)
But the line that caught my eye was this one:
“As with all laws, they are there for a police officer to use as they see appropriate,” says a spokesman.
Really? All laws? Damn…
Wikipedia founder: “don’t cite”: “Nature.com decided to conduct a small test to see how Wikipedia would fare against the Encyclopedia Britannica. Working from a statistically small sample of 42 randomly chosen science articles, the results show that the two are closer than many would assume. On average, Wikipedia had 33 percent more errors, with 162 ‘factual errors, omissions or misleading statements, ‘ as compared to 123 for Britannica. In terms of egregious errors involving inaccurately explained concepts or misinterpretations of data, the experts found four instances in each of the two encyclopedias. Of course, what constitutes a major error is often in the eye of the beholder.
The most error-strewn article, that on Dmitry Mendeleev, co-creator of the periodic table, illustrates this. Michael Gordin, a science historian at Princeton University who wrote a 2004 book on Mendeleev, identified 19 errors in Wikipedia and 8 in Britannica. These range from minor mistakes, such as describing Mendeleev as the 14th child in his family when he was the 13th, to more significant inaccuracies. Wikipedia, for example, incorrectly describes how Mendeleev’s work relates to that of British chemist John Dalton. ‘Who wrote this stuff?’ asked another reviewer. ‘Do they bother to check with experts?’
Depending on your point of view, this is either a great win for Wikipedia, or proof that it is sub-standard as compared to Britannica. The fact of the matter is that with only 42 articles reviewed, there’s not much to go on either way.”
Actually, that’s a lot better a result for Wikipedia than I would have expected. But then, with hindsight it does make more sense. Areas where there are considerably less articles or articles with less content are not the technology or science ones, but sociology, art, philosophy and ’soft’ topics where the interested parties are less likely to be tech-heads hardwired into the net.
technorati tags: wikipedia, britannica
Microsoft Team RSS Blog : Icons: It’s still orange
Microsoft were in a quandery about how to show or signify RSS feeds, both in IE7 and the rest of their RSS enabled portfolio due next year. Then, in a wierd and unprecedented shift, the entire team decided to take a trip to Mozilla, had a chat, and are now standardising on the Firefox feed icon 
Will this last? Or is it a case of “Well we had to collaberate on something sometime and it may as well be something as irrelevant as an icon.”
Only time will tell…
technorati tags: rss, firefox, microsoft
All raait! It’s a new black-white lingo – Sunday Times – Times Online: “Linguists have identified Britain’s first multi-ethnic dialect – a variant of English that includes words and sounds from cockney, Jamaican creole, Bengali and other languages. “
Interesting. Currently this is a phenomenon of ethnically integrated urban metropoli, so I don’t really expect the kids of Aldershot to start going on about their nang creps just yet. However, if the patois continues to be used in British urban music I can see it spreading to smaller towns.
Next steps after that? First there’ll be a linguistic divide between those that speak raait and those that think it’s an offensive corruption of the Queen’s English. Then the dialect will become popular with public schoolkids wanting to sound cool. Eventually your mum will pick up a few words and throw them into casual conversation to sound ‘with it’, essentially and finally sounding the death knell for this particular trend.
Maybe in 20 years time we’ll be left with only a few dialects left in Britain. Raait, l33t and BBC…
technorati tags: language, patois
BBC NEWS | Technology | Self-destruct SMS proves popular: “Thousands of people have subscribed to a self-destruct text message service which started on Sunday in the UK, says the firm behind the system. The commercial service allows sensitive messages to be destroyed 40 seconds after being read.
‘The technology behind StealthText is derived from military technology, so the comparisons with Mission Impossible are justified,’ said Carole Barnum, chief executive of Staellium UK.
Privacy comes at a price. Each text using the system costs 50 pence, though users have to sign up for a minimum of 10 messages.
People interested in using the service to send messages have to register and download a small program onto their mobile phone.
Once a message has been sent, the recipient receives a text notification showing the sender’s name and a link to the message.
After they have opened it, the message disappears after 40 seconds.
Despite the fact the message will be removed from phones, users cannot entirely avoid a data trail.
For legal reasons, a log of the message will remain on a secure server to which they have no access. “
So it’s not really an SMS then, but let’s not split hairs.
I find this interesting that people are willing to pay five times as much for a text message to avoid embarressing situations where the recipient of an SMS does not delete it. It won’t protect from litigation, as the company must hold all messages for legal reaons, so it really is an expensive modesty protector.
And of course as it seems to be some kind of Java appm it won’t work on everyone’s phones, nor is it guaranteed that the recipient can go online to read the message. Talk about niche…
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Song sites face legal crackdown: “The music industry is to extend its copyright war by taking legal action against websites offering unlicensed song scores and lyrics.
The Music Publishers’ Association (MPA), which represents US sheet music companies, will launch its first campaign against such sites in 2006.
MPA president Lauren Keiser said he wanted site owners to be jailed.
Guitar licks and song scores are widely available on the internet but are ‘completely illegal’, he told the BBC.
Mr Keiser said he did not just want to shut websites and impose fines, saying if authorities can ‘throw in some jail time I think we’ll be a little more effective’. “
Next: Music Ass. of America jails teenager for singing in shower without paying royalties.
