I figured out how to get wireless working on my laptop -- previously I had the driver loading but the card wouldn't keep an essid and thus could not get on any network. It was as simple as pressing the "wireless on/off" button on the system. Apparently it defaults to off on Linux, and as there's no visual indicator if it's on or off, I had no way to know why the card didn't work. Anyhow, I have working wireless, and am happy about it. w00t. (oh, yes, for the googlers, this is a dv8000z again).
I ran into Andreas, a coworker from Italy, while at the 61c today (he was walking by). After chatting for a bit, we saw some old guy fall down on the street outside. Apparently the poor old guy was a bit out of it, and his watch was set a few hours in the future. It was kind of odd to see.
I have the paperwork and thumbs up from my boss on taking classes at CMU next semester and summer semester. I just need to figure out what to take now.. I intend to retake Russian in summer if nothing else jumps out at me and if it's not full, although fall is still a complete mystery.
During the recent radio interview, Jimbo Wales, Philosopher-King of Wikipedia, decided to instate a new rule whereby users must be logged in to post new articles. I have always felt that steps like this are a good thing, but are politically impossible there because it's "against wiki spirit". I can't exactly call myself a Sangerist (Larry Sanger and Jimbo started Nupedia (on which I was a lurker), and Sanger criticises the project for being too open and enabling to trolls, proposing a much more restricted model for contribution), but I believe that the current Wiki-"super open" attitude is suboptimal. It works, but not as well as it might. I feel that a more meritocratic and structured organisation would be better, and am delighted to see Jimbo forcing the right-but-politically-difficult decision. I think that at least the following are suboptimal on Wikipedia:
- There are too many admins, and people are made admin far too early in their contribution
- People care too much about not biting the newbies even when it's clear that said newbies are vandals. An example is thanking new people for vandalising pages and gently suggesting they use the sandbox.
- People do not agressively prevent people from gathering non-Wikipedians to create accounts to vote on things
- Too much effort is made to make it possible for anonymous IPs to comfortably edit on Wikipedia
- Create councils of experts and give them dominion over relevant articles. I don't oppose this in theory, but feel that it has not been shown to be necessary and until it is, the cost of doing so is unwarranted
- Institute approval processes for articles. This introduces too much staticism, and if it's to happen, it should at least leave things open for revision on the main site, making a separate version (or access mode) for approved articles.
I now, not entirely surprisingly, find myself to picking up a very slight internet celebrity status for various reasons. It's a little bit weird. I had it before, several years ago, but it faded when I stopped working on certain projects.
