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16 May 2010 21:24

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Tech: Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales smeared by Fox News over child porn on site

  • Fox News is off their rocker. They don’t even bother to contact me before publishing nonsense.
  • Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales • Regarding an article on Fox News’s Web site suggesting that he had lost administrative privileges on his own site after he tried to delete a number of controversial images from the site that could be seen as child pornography. The Fox News article was a follow-up to an earlier piece about a letter now-departed co-founder Larry Sanger sent to the FBI regarding the site’s depictions of child porn, and unfortunately for the site, that one is true (and is a source of great debate amongst editors). source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Mar 2010 22:37

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Tech: Wikipedia went down today, and the world somehow survived

  • And so we remember Thursday, March 25, 2010 as the day every English speaking student failed their research papers.
  • Wikipedia commenter “Jimmy” • Regarding the server meltdown that the site had earlier today. The meltdown, which knocked out the site’s European data center, caused the server not to load for many users. It was due to overheating probably caused by someone looking up this article. “This problem was quickly resolved, but unfortunately it may take up to an hour before access is restored for everyone, due to caching effects,” a blog post on the downtime said. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 Nov 2009 23:40

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Politics: Wikipedia moves faster on Joseph Cao than everyone else

  • When you Google Joseph Cao, the text that comes up in the search says, ‘Joseph Cao has no family. He was born of Satan and lost a soul the day he voted against republicans. Cao’s father, My Quang Cao (born 1931), …’
  • An unsigned Wikipedia comment on the Joseph Cao talk page • Noting the speed at which his page was updated to come across as an evil liberal-supporting spawn of Satan. We hope that Mr. Cao threw baseballs around with his satanic father every once in a while. (Via @andrewottoson) • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Oct 2009 09:47

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Tech: The WikiReader: Wikipedia for people without iPhones handy

wikireader1014
  • It’s like a combination between an Amazon Kindle and a Tamagotchi. It looks neat. But so does your cell phone. At $99, where’s the market for this?source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Aug 2009 01:35

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Tech: Poll: Wikipedia’s about to limit edits to the site. Should they?

  • It’s for the common good or something. The New York Times reported yesterday that that big, crazy experiment in knowledge, Wikipedia, is about to make some big changes to its policy. Within a few weeks, the user-edited encyclopedia will have an extra layer of editing for articles on living people – a volunteer with a lot of time on their hands will approve each edit. It’s not too unlike what they do for really popular articles like Britney Spears or Barack Obama, except expanded to EVERY living person. What do you think – is this a road they should go down? Vote above. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Jul 2009 18:48

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Politics: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a Rorschach inkblot…on Wikipedia!

Psychologists are freakin’ out after someone posted the famous inkblots on Wikipedia, saying it defeats the purpose of the test. Others say, dude, it’s the internet. source
Posted by Nathalie Heiberg • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Jun 2009 01:07

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Tech, World: Some Wikipedia editors can’t see the kidnapping for the trees

  • Is that enough proof for you [expletives]? I was right. You were WRONG.
  • An anonymous Wikipedia editor based in Florida • On the news that New York Times reporter David Rohde was in fact captured by the Taliban and escaped. What this jerk didn’t know was that The Times, with the help of Wikipedia king Jimmy Wales himself, was blocking the information from the site to prevent news of his capture from reaching the mainstream media. If Rohde’s fate was known, they feared, his chances of escape would be much lower. Wales was not thrilled with the process but willing to help. “We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” he said. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.” • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

29 May 2009 20:38

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Culture, Tech: Scientologists looking to game Wikipedia can no longer do so

  • Wikipedia banned the group after a hard-fought war of edits. Yesterday, the tribal council – a.k.a. the site’s arbitration council – decided to ban the religion and many members associated with it, due to a high number of self-serving edits. The money-laden religion, which claims that humans are reincarnations who lived on other planets, often gets criticized for supposedly bilking its members of their lifesavings. We personally think Tom Cruise should be making movies instead of editing his Wikipedia entry, personally. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 May 2009 09:16

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Culture, Tech: Wikipedia managed to hijack a dead guy’s obit with a fake quote

  • The quote When he died at the end of March, Maurice Jarre was quoted on his Wikipedia entry as saying: “One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear.” source
  • The quote When he died at the end of March, Maurice Jarre was quoted on his Wikipedia entry as saying: “One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear.”
  • The reason Jarre is an Oscar-winning composer who has the perfect combination of obscurity, cultural impact and newsworthiness to allow for a quote like this to be completely fabricated, a fact 22-year-old Irish student Shane Fitzgerald took advantage of to see how journalists will tend to use the Web as a primary source. Prick. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

31 Mar 2009 21:46

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Tech: Why Microsoft is killing their Encarta online encyclopedia

  • 97% of all Internet users looking for an online encyclopedia go to Wikipedia source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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