Wikipedia co-founder seeks to start over: Citizendium hopes to avoid vandalism and inconsistency of Wikipedia

In just six years, Wikipedia has mushroomed into one of the Web’s most astonishing successes, with 1.7 million articles in English alone. The downside is that the free encyclopedia has its share of errors and juvenile vandalism, and sometimes the writing is incomprehensibly arcane.

To Wikipedia fans, these blemishes are an unavoidable — and relatively small — price to pay for the dazzling breadth spawned by its “anyone can edit” open design.

But Larry Sanger doesn’t buy it. To Sanger — who was present at the creation of Wikipedia (in fact, call him a co-founder, although that, like many things within Wikipedia, is disputed) — its charms seem to outweigh its warts simply because it has no competition.

And that’s precisely what Sanger hopes to change.

This week, Sanger takes the wraps off a Wikipedia alternative, Citizendium. His goal is to capture Wikipedia’s bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism and inconsistency that are its pitfalls.

Resource Description Framework article is available in Turkish now!

Finally finished translation the article about Resource Description Framework. Translation is available in tr.wikipedia.org. You can edit to contribute translation any time. Every comment is welcome.

“Kaynak Tanımlama Çerçevesi(RDF)(Resource Description Framework), metadata model olarak tasarlanmış bir World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) spesifikasyonu olmasına rağmen, çeşitli sözdizim biçemlerinde bilgi modellemek…” More …

Python Challenge: The first programming riddle on the net

Python Challenge is a game in which each level can be solved by a bit of (Python) programming.

The Python Challenge was written by Nadav Samet.
All levels can be solved by straightforward and very short1 scripts.
Python Challenge welcomes programmers of all languages. You will be able to solve most riddles in any programming language, but some of them will require Python.
Sometimes you’ll need extra modules. All can be downloaded for free from the internet.
It is just for fun – nothing waits for you at the end.
Keep the scripts you write – they might become useful.

Here is the first riddle:

Hint: try to change the URL address.

http://www.pythonchallenge.com/pc/def/0.html

Good luck!

Van Gogh and Millet

Jean-Francois Millet, another painter of around van Gogh’s era also created works where peasants play a central role. His painting, The Gleaners, shows three women gleaning, or “gathering the ears of wheat left over after reaping,” (Ives 116) on what appears to be a sunny day. Millet’s peasants do seem to be doing back-breaking work, but a glance at van Gogh’s sketch, Peasant Woman Gleaning makes Millet’s women, painted with a warm tone, look as if their work really is not so harsh. Van Gogh creates a hard texture with his pencil and makes the woman look rough and less gentile than Millet does. Again, the awkwardness of the pose of van Gogh’s woman contributes to the harsh look of the sketch, His gleaner appears as if someone hit a pause button on her life, and she is stuck in that position. This is in contrast to Millet’s figures, which are smoothly painted, and seem to be more anatomically correct than van Gogh’s; thus, they look more comfortable with the work they are doing, both physically and emotionally.

Eminent poet Edgar Allan Poe’s, well-known poem: Annabel Lee

Eminent poet Edgar Allan Poe’s, well-known poem: Annabel Lee. Two Turkish translations available below. Enjoy.

Annabel Lee

it was many and many a year ago,
in a kingdom by the sea,
that a maiden there lived whom you may know
by the name of annabel lee;
and this maiden she lived with no other thought
than to love and be loved by me.
she was a child and i was a child,
in this kingdom by the sea,
but we loved with a love that was more than love
i and my annabel lee
with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
coveted her and me.

Quicksilver: A very killer app from Blacktree, Inc

Wei Wu Wei – Act Without Doing

Quicksilver has one very important effect: the effort of frequent tasks fades into the background and you are able to act without thinking. After an adaptation period, Quicksilver becomes an extension of yourself; the process fades away leaving only the results.

Search

At first glance, Quicksilver is a launcher.

Command Window

When opened, it will create a catalog of applications and some frequently used folders and documents. Activate it, and you can search for and open anything in its catalog instantly.

C Puzzles

In this site, there is a bunch of C programming questions. Enjoy!

First puzzle:

The expected output of the following C program is to print the elements in the array. But when actually run, it doesn’t do so.

#include<stdio.h>
#define TOTAL_ELEMENTS (sizeof(array) / sizeof(array[0]))  

int array[] = {23,34,12,17,204,99,16};
int main()
  {
      int d;
      for(d=-1;d <= (TOTAL_ELEMENTS-2);d++)
          printf("%dn",array[d+1]);
      return 0;
  }

Find out what’s going wrong.

For more…