I told you I would explain why I felt comfortable referencing Wikipedia as a valid source in a post on the use of the term Democracy (here).

Who seriously uses Wikipedia as a trusted source?

A ton of college students and Joe Schmoe. And who can blame them? It’s fast, free and easy.

But is it a good idea?

I believe the better question is: Are the alternatives really all that much more trustworthy? The fact is that WikiPedia is just like ANY reference source. You don’t REALLY know who wrote it (unless you ARE the one who wrote it, of course).

Wait, wait, wait! What do you mean “you don’t know who wrote it?” The fine people at EB wrote that good Ol’ encyclopedia for us! Who are you to say they’re wrong?

But who are you to say they are RIGHT? The fact is, encyclopedias are written by humans. Often written by humans without credit to the author. Is that author an expert on the subject? What were the sources used for the information? Even a BAD research paper is required to have sources in order to be accepted as a bad research paper. Otherwise, it may as well be a work of fiction. And this is my point. Most accepted reference sources don’t site THEIR sources or don’t even give writing credits. So the question is: Why should we blindly trust them?

Ok, so maybe I’m putting blind faith in classic sources. But why trust Wikipedia? I heard that they are just publicly written articles without any editing.

But therein lies the beauty of Wikipedia. It IS a set of publicly written articles. But who else would want to write an article about a semiempirical quantum chemistry method, developed by Roald Hoffmann (Extended Huckel method) but someone who was ACTUALLY interested in such an obscure topic. Not someone who is just simply assigned the topic. Not only that, but instead of no editing at all, the whole thing is edited by the public at large. That means that if someone who knows the subject BETTER comes along, they can change it. Yep, just like that. In addition to that, an article must have SOURCES to be valid. That means that if the subject is important to you, you can track down where the author got THEIR information and verify its validity.

So is Wikipedia the perfect source? Should I use it for ALL KNOWLEDGE?!!

NO!! Egads you are dense, mysterious inquisitive voice! It just means that you can verify that the article is telling a reasonable approximation of the truth. Maybe. Fact is, Wikipedia gets errors, vandalism, and attacks like many other sites and references. While the big guys in the encyclopedia world are quick to disagree that the error rate could be relatively close between their product and Wikipedia, there are studies that show just that.  The Wikipedia article that mentions this (reliability of Wikipedia) even sites the source and says that it was not a peer reviewed study.

You see, there is really no way to be sure of the source of your information unless YOU wrote it, but then it is not a reliable source outside of yourself. It is a catch-22 from which there is no real escape. I,of course, just don’t believe that a paper should be counted against due to Wikipedia being sited as a source yet not if some independent article or paper is cited when the party reviewing the work is not studiously following up on the sources for full verification. And by that I mean track down the bastard that wrote the source and BEAT the truth out of him (or her). Or at least read the damn source articles. It would be much easier to allow a citing to Wikipedia.

Insight into my mind for one brief moment: When the title of this post floated into my consciousness after the subject matter beat me upside the head, I then proceeded to start relating it to My Three Sons. Just thought I’d share. There was no point to that particular thought.

Anyways…

So a thought occurred to me a few moments ago: Why do I have three browsers when I only use one?

I could say that it is due to web design work, but we both know that I would be lying then. Well, I know why I have two of them. Firefox is my current browser of choice and Internet Explorer came pre-installed on this operating system (or when I am logged into Kubuntu, Konqueror is the pre-installed). The pre-installed choice is quickly forgotten about. So why do I have a third, unused browser just taking up space? I downloaded Google Chrome at the time because, like smoking, it was the cool thing to do. But then I disengaged from the in crowd, distanced myself from the “I want to think I am non-conformist, but I am really subconsciously just conforming to my idea of nonconformistism to be secure in conforming to something” crowd, and even chided myself for making such a bad after-school-special joke about it being the “cool thing to do”. I  looked at why I actually installed Chrome. It was the interest in how browsing could be changed and made better. I read the comic and was genuinely impressed with some of the ideas that they decided to implement into this new browser. So why am I having to ask myself why I still have it? That’s easy. It’s incomplete. I know several people (including myself) who flocked to Chrome because of its intuitive interface and faster rendering. I tried to switch to it exclusively but kept having to pull this or that up in Firefox because it was easier or there was no plug-in  support for Chrome yet.

Unless you want to go through the trouble of using the Dev Kit, you just can’t mold Chrome into your own functional browser… yet.

They said they were going to be adding the ability to add plug-ins and add-ons (as you can easily do in Firefox), but where is that functionality? Where is the RSS integration? Where are the small things that would allow me to take advantage of this fast rendering and independent threaded beast that I long to be alone with? I still will have Chrome installed and might even jump on it every now and then. I just wish that since some of the code comes from the Mozilla project, I could use my favorite Firefox add-ons and manage plug-ins. Just adding this functionality would have me dropping Firefox as my main browser like it gave me some bad disease. Not that I dislike Firefox. I would just keep it as the mistress from that point.

Guess this kinda turned into a rant about how Google Chrome is taking too long to come of age. Hmm. Gotta try to keep from doing that.

Have Fun

-Mike

Password stealing for dummies – heise Security UK.

I stumbled on this very interesting article on password stealing. Why would I link to something that seems to promote illegal activities? I wouldn’t. But I would link to something that gives you the tools to practice safer browsing. This article describes a very nasty way of stealing passwords that actually uses the REAL LOGIN PAGE! If you know any javascript, you might be able to recognized links that might be infected, but if not, this article can give you a couple of ways to side-step this danger. Enjoy!

Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Introducing Snowl.

We at Just a Blog Site like Mozilla. In fact, I cringe a little when I see a lit of visitors are using IE instead of Firefox. I don;’t hold it against you. As a windows user it is already there and you didn’t create the site, so the better HTML and CSS support doesn’t weigh into your usage choice. I get it. But if you are a Firefox user, you may have lamented the lack of a fully integrable RSS/Atom reader. IE has one. One that integrates with Outlook 07 no less. Well, Snowl is the answer.

Not only does Snowl support RSS/Atom, but it can also import Twitter feeds and let you search through all of them easily. Well at least that is what this firts prototype can do. Future iterations will probably do more. Interested in using this now? Well you can get it in it’s prototype form right from Mozilla, but I recommend reading more about it from the linked article first. If you don’t relish the idea of losing feed content you my want to wait for Beta or better versions.

Wow, so this is the first I’m hearing of GENI. I’ll give it credit, it sounds like a fun project to be part of but I’m not sure how well it will do in the end.

Here is the basics from what I understand so far: GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations) is “a massive project to redesign and rebuild the Internet from scratch” having already received $12 Million in funding and about 40 gigabits per second of bandwidth provided by other companies to run testing. The project is being headed up by BBN Technologies, INC, a company that prides themselves as being able to “accomplish the most difficult technological feats across a range of disciplines,” and is being backed by National Science Foundation (aka: the government).

Rebuilding the internet seems like an interesting idea. From a security perspective, there is a lot just in the nature of the current Internet left to be desired. There does seem to be some talk about that specifically being one of the reasons for the rebuild; “a ‘clean-slate’ approach is the only way to truly address security and other challenges that have cropped up since the Internet’s birth in 1969.”

It seems to me, though, that we’ve been perfecting the art of keeping the current Internet version alive for so long that to start over would be asking for more problems and more risks. But maybe a rebuild with the wisdom gained from the successes and failures of the current system would achieve better results. Who knows?

You can, officially, check out the official GENI FAQ on the official GENI site.

Given, it may be another 5 years and about $350 Million before we see a final product. It stands to be an interesting project to follow.

- john

bye-bye interwebs