[oclug] Linux talk tonight.

[Jon Earle]

Brad Barnett wrote:
> Wikipedia's issues will only be resolved when there is a way to publish
> a static page by consent, perhaps every week or month or so.  When this
> occurs, Wikipedia's strengths will no longer be cancelled out by its
> weaknesses.
>
> Until then Bill, you're nuts if you hand out Wikipedia urls as trusted.
> This specific page in question will likely move all over the place in the
> next six months.  It could easily move to rants against Windows, and back
> to rants against Linux.  It could be entirely replaced for fun by someone
> over a period of a few hours, and not caught for a few days.  I could be
> replaced by a picture containing child porn, and during the few minutes it
> stays, be viewed by someone you have sent there.

I used to think as you, but then I realized the folly of that. ;)

Wikipedia has the _potential_ to be inaccurate from time to time, however,
there are enough editors and monitors watching over things to ensure that no
"replacement page" stays up very long, thus marginalizing that potential.  So
what if the page on Linux is replaced by a porn short for a few minutes...
someone with BO and a goatee will have it replaced in a jiffy with the usual
canned warning to change one's offending ways, etc.

Heck, even minor accuratizing (I just made up that word) edits are often
reverted if someone doesn't believe the new truth.  What's up tends to stay
up, from what I've observed.

Would I use it as a HOWTO for brain surgery?  Hell no... but basic facts and
knowledge are rather hard to disprove and for that - a general repository of
knowledge that's manageable by mankind - it's actually quite good.

>> > As a side note, I have encountered genuine shock in people seeing my
>> > Thunderbird on Ubuntu: "but it looks just like Outlook".

Never heard that.

It's not a bad alternative - one of the better ones out there, actually, but
Outlook still has some lovely features that are integrated within - sticky
notes, task list (that you can pass around from assignee to assignee, etc),
journal, nice calendar, etc.  Sadly, T-bird is just a mail client so I'm
forced to using notepad to edit a billion little documents.  Or, I just email
myself a note and store it in a folder somewhere.  There's always a way
around things, but Outook (and yes, I've been caught by its bugs) makes a
pretty decent all around client.