Informit - The ITU Expressed
Read about the ITU and its functions in the Telecommunications industry.
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=21406&seqNum=3&rl=1
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Monday, April 9, 2007
Memo 11: Can we really trust Anti-trust?
This blog talks about Anti-Trust and the Laws that are associated with its practice:
What are Antitrust Laws for?
"Broadly speaking, antitrust laws seek to promote fair competition on the merits and to protect consumers and businesses from anti-competitive business practices. The antitrust laws therefore forbid the wrongful acquisition of monopoly power, the abuse of monopoly power even if it was properly acquired in the first place, and other business practices that improperly stifle or suppress free competition. "1
Personally I find this topic extremely intersting, particularly how the need for Anti-Trust action, builds till a point where it boils over and then catches the public eye in a series of publicly made statements, disputes etc. between the involved parties.
The Microsoft Anti-trust case of course is one of the most obvious choices to examine for the purposes of this blog. But I'd like to go into one that is still a very hot topic, and one that is yet to be resolved. In all cases, what is happening is that these anti-trust laws, in conjuction with the legal system find themselves being employed primarily in a high-tech environment, where the lines a blurry enough for even the most qualified neutral party, and what the judicial system has to try to do is draw straight lines around curves at times. The interesting thing about science is that there are several ways to prove something, by induction, observation and so forth, and sometimes, the results themselves can come out differently depending on the method we choose. So in this particular case, where among other more distinct Anti-trust behaviour patterns that AMD claim Intel have been engaging in, AMD claim that Intel produce bad benchmarks that fool the public. Well, we'll get into that a bit later, lets look at why AMD claim Intel is being found guilty of Anti-trust behaviour. The following points are from the legal complaint that was put forward to the Federal District Court of Delaware for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the California Unfair Competition Law.
• Intel has forced major customers into exclusive or near-exclusive deals;
• it has conditioned rebates, allowances and market development funding on customers’ agreement to severely limit or forego entirely purchases from AMD;
• it has established a system of discriminatory, retroactive, first-dollar rebates triggered by
purchases at such high levels as to have the practical and intended effect of denying customers the freedom to purchase any significant volume of processors from AMD;
• it has threatened retaliation against customers introducing AMD computer platforms, particularly in strategic market segments;
• it has established and enforced quotas among key retailers effectively requiring them to stock overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, Intel-powered computers, thereby artificially limiting consumer choice;
• it has forced PC makers and technology partners to boycott AMD product launches and promotions;
• and it has abused its market power by forcing on the industry technical standards and products which have as their central purpose the handicapping of AMD in the
marketplace.
So what AMD are fighting against is that Intel are abusing their power, threatening the market with discriminatory pricing, ruling the competition out through supplier based stipulations to various manufacturers and in general forced the industry to turn a blind eye towards potential competition. They believe that the end result is that, end-user choice is artificially limited and that a more open market will lead to the end-user having the best technology they can possibly get.
My view is that, behind the scenes each government that makes its decision will need to first query within itself what the best interest are for its economy and how exactly they will define Anti-trust. The best part of all of this is that, the two companies in the public eye that are being charged with Anti-trust behaviour, Microsoft and Intel, were and perhaps still are world leaders in their field. I am not pro Intel or Microsoft, but one of the reasons why they are where they are is because of their ability to drive the industry forward, the genuinly had, at some stage a very good product. How they marketed it may have been a different story altogether. Perhaps at this given time, both of them may be in a period of slightly less productivity, but productivity is not a linear process, it is a stepwise incremental function. A fairly accurate analogy can be drawn to a sportsperson, where they improve in steps rather than a straight line, which is why they are paid well, because after all the early years of practice etc. they only truly have about 5-10 years of competitive practice in which to earn, and consider the thought of a cripling injury? So they make the most of what they have when they have it. Compare that to a normal human being, that has a career that lasts almost double that in most cases, things are far more controllable.
So in essense would it be fair to say an established athlete must be penalized, for not performing as well as he/she used to? Adding that, when they were doing well, they had all the attention from all the sponsors? I think not, I think the choice lies with those who choose to sponsor, namely all the brand manufacturers who subscribe to Intel as a sole processor provider. It is they who must use their volition to choose AMD or Intel, and should AMD provide a better service and show the kind of continued presence in the industry, then they will surely displace Intel as the processor manufacturer of choice, till then, its understandable that they will remain in the after-glow of Intel's achievements, rather than try and trip Intel up, where they may just be trying to retain market share in a moment of change, perhaps to their central architecture as it tries to prepare itself for the next step up in processor technology.
Change is the price of survival, and Intel may just be paying the price in the short term, I doubt we need complicated legislation to motivate these fundamentals. Do you think AMD would not have done exactly the same thing, and be willing to pay the price of being prosecuted legally for an extended market share offer? I think the rules of the economy state it fairly clearly what they would have done, its a cycle that will always exist, like two children and a candy bar.
Reference:
1. Madonado & Markham LLP
2. AMD
What are Antitrust Laws for?
"Broadly speaking, antitrust laws seek to promote fair competition on the merits and to protect consumers and businesses from anti-competitive business practices. The antitrust laws therefore forbid the wrongful acquisition of monopoly power, the abuse of monopoly power even if it was properly acquired in the first place, and other business practices that improperly stifle or suppress free competition. "1
Personally I find this topic extremely intersting, particularly how the need for Anti-Trust action, builds till a point where it boils over and then catches the public eye in a series of publicly made statements, disputes etc. between the involved parties.
The Microsoft Anti-trust case of course is one of the most obvious choices to examine for the purposes of this blog. But I'd like to go into one that is still a very hot topic, and one that is yet to be resolved. In all cases, what is happening is that these anti-trust laws, in conjuction with the legal system find themselves being employed primarily in a high-tech environment, where the lines a blurry enough for even the most qualified neutral party, and what the judicial system has to try to do is draw straight lines around curves at times. The interesting thing about science is that there are several ways to prove something, by induction, observation and so forth, and sometimes, the results themselves can come out differently depending on the method we choose. So in this particular case, where among other more distinct Anti-trust behaviour patterns that AMD claim Intel have been engaging in, AMD claim that Intel produce bad benchmarks that fool the public. Well, we'll get into that a bit later, lets look at why AMD claim Intel is being found guilty of Anti-trust behaviour. The following points are from the legal complaint that was put forward to the Federal District Court of Delaware for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the California Unfair Competition Law.
• Intel has forced major customers into exclusive or near-exclusive deals;
• it has conditioned rebates, allowances and market development funding on customers’ agreement to severely limit or forego entirely purchases from AMD;
• it has established a system of discriminatory, retroactive, first-dollar rebates triggered by
purchases at such high levels as to have the practical and intended effect of denying customers the freedom to purchase any significant volume of processors from AMD;
• it has threatened retaliation against customers introducing AMD computer platforms, particularly in strategic market segments;
• it has established and enforced quotas among key retailers effectively requiring them to stock overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, Intel-powered computers, thereby artificially limiting consumer choice;
• it has forced PC makers and technology partners to boycott AMD product launches and promotions;
• and it has abused its market power by forcing on the industry technical standards and products which have as their central purpose the handicapping of AMD in the
marketplace.
So what AMD are fighting against is that Intel are abusing their power, threatening the market with discriminatory pricing, ruling the competition out through supplier based stipulations to various manufacturers and in general forced the industry to turn a blind eye towards potential competition. They believe that the end result is that, end-user choice is artificially limited and that a more open market will lead to the end-user having the best technology they can possibly get.
My view is that, behind the scenes each government that makes its decision will need to first query within itself what the best interest are for its economy and how exactly they will define Anti-trust. The best part of all of this is that, the two companies in the public eye that are being charged with Anti-trust behaviour, Microsoft and Intel, were and perhaps still are world leaders in their field. I am not pro Intel or Microsoft, but one of the reasons why they are where they are is because of their ability to drive the industry forward, the genuinly had, at some stage a very good product. How they marketed it may have been a different story altogether. Perhaps at this given time, both of them may be in a period of slightly less productivity, but productivity is not a linear process, it is a stepwise incremental function. A fairly accurate analogy can be drawn to a sportsperson, where they improve in steps rather than a straight line, which is why they are paid well, because after all the early years of practice etc. they only truly have about 5-10 years of competitive practice in which to earn, and consider the thought of a cripling injury? So they make the most of what they have when they have it. Compare that to a normal human being, that has a career that lasts almost double that in most cases, things are far more controllable.
So in essense would it be fair to say an established athlete must be penalized, for not performing as well as he/she used to? Adding that, when they were doing well, they had all the attention from all the sponsors? I think not, I think the choice lies with those who choose to sponsor, namely all the brand manufacturers who subscribe to Intel as a sole processor provider. It is they who must use their volition to choose AMD or Intel, and should AMD provide a better service and show the kind of continued presence in the industry, then they will surely displace Intel as the processor manufacturer of choice, till then, its understandable that they will remain in the after-glow of Intel's achievements, rather than try and trip Intel up, where they may just be trying to retain market share in a moment of change, perhaps to their central architecture as it tries to prepare itself for the next step up in processor technology.
Change is the price of survival, and Intel may just be paying the price in the short term, I doubt we need complicated legislation to motivate these fundamentals. Do you think AMD would not have done exactly the same thing, and be willing to pay the price of being prosecuted legally for an extended market share offer? I think the rules of the economy state it fairly clearly what they would have done, its a cycle that will always exist, like two children and a candy bar.
Reference:
1. Madonado & Markham LLP
2. AMD
Monday, April 2, 2007
Memo 10: Google Docs - Sensible?
This blog talks about the concept of online desktop publishing, and in particular Google Docs. What that basically means is the creation of content, primarily word processing and spreadsheet formats based on a ubiquitous platform that is easily distributed and shared among the cyber community.
With this in mind, the aim of Google docs is to facilitate the storage or creation of content in a manner in which a user, or several users may contribute to the creation of various documents in a real time format from geographically diverse locations. Great, so how does it all work, well each user would need internet access with a basic amount of bandwidth, a browser, that has “Ajax” capability. In case your wondering, Ajax is the reason why the Gmail interface feels a lot more alive, because the page is capable of polling a source automatically, as compared to other web based mail interfaces like for example Hotmail in which the user has to refresh a page manually in order to determine whether any changes have occurred to the inbox. The usage of Ajax is not really a big deal though because most browsers come with Ajax support. Which adds adds more comfort to the way the interface handles changes that are made dynamically, among several users.
There are several micro-benefits to Google docs, users may know who is online and who has access to each document that is available. There is also access and user discrimination, in that some documents are set to have read-only access and others are open for editing. The same goes for users, some may view others may edit. So that’s great, so how does it really hold up compared to standard offline publishing? Well for starters the first thing that people note is the limited range of functions as compared to an offline version. This include basic level functions such as the limited range of fonts, or margin manipulations and extends into some greyer areas that co-incide with rights management and regulatory concerns. Examples include, why one cannot upload another extremely popular format, built on the concept of cross-platform ubiquity and mobile access, and that is the “pdf” format. Most technical documents use pdf’s for several reasons, to do with data scalability and document security, so why have Google not considered this?
All in all, I do believe I the benefit of having a tool like Google docs is great, particularly in small scale operations, but what is the final vision that Google has, full scale competition to offline distributed systems? Perhaps, perhaps not, sorry but there are just too many factors influencing my verdict this time, like for instance the power of parallel processing, which plays into the servers managing the functions of online applications like Google Docs. Parallel processing might be given a boost in the upcoming future by the enhancements that the emerging “ballistic transistor” technology brings with it. Its set to make a fairly big splash in the processor world, and all of this will benefit online applications that may compete better in this “thiner” framework. But as far as I am concerned, the internet has always been shy of being reliable, and for that reason or the lack of much better choices I would still prefer Microsoft’s suite of desktop publishing products, for the sake of reliability and functionality.
With this in mind, the aim of Google docs is to facilitate the storage or creation of content in a manner in which a user, or several users may contribute to the creation of various documents in a real time format from geographically diverse locations. Great, so how does it all work, well each user would need internet access with a basic amount of bandwidth, a browser, that has “Ajax” capability. In case your wondering, Ajax is the reason why the Gmail interface feels a lot more alive, because the page is capable of polling a source automatically, as compared to other web based mail interfaces like for example Hotmail in which the user has to refresh a page manually in order to determine whether any changes have occurred to the inbox. The usage of Ajax is not really a big deal though because most browsers come with Ajax support. Which adds adds more comfort to the way the interface handles changes that are made dynamically, among several users.
There are several micro-benefits to Google docs, users may know who is online and who has access to each document that is available. There is also access and user discrimination, in that some documents are set to have read-only access and others are open for editing. The same goes for users, some may view others may edit. So that’s great, so how does it really hold up compared to standard offline publishing? Well for starters the first thing that people note is the limited range of functions as compared to an offline version. This include basic level functions such as the limited range of fonts, or margin manipulations and extends into some greyer areas that co-incide with rights management and regulatory concerns. Examples include, why one cannot upload another extremely popular format, built on the concept of cross-platform ubiquity and mobile access, and that is the “pdf” format. Most technical documents use pdf’s for several reasons, to do with data scalability and document security, so why have Google not considered this?
All in all, I do believe I the benefit of having a tool like Google docs is great, particularly in small scale operations, but what is the final vision that Google has, full scale competition to offline distributed systems? Perhaps, perhaps not, sorry but there are just too many factors influencing my verdict this time, like for instance the power of parallel processing, which plays into the servers managing the functions of online applications like Google Docs. Parallel processing might be given a boost in the upcoming future by the enhancements that the emerging “ballistic transistor” technology brings with it. Its set to make a fairly big splash in the processor world, and all of this will benefit online applications that may compete better in this “thiner” framework. But as far as I am concerned, the internet has always been shy of being reliable, and for that reason or the lack of much better choices I would still prefer Microsoft’s suite of desktop publishing products, for the sake of reliability and functionality.
Memo 9: Second Life: A Twisted Tale or a Learning Forum?
This blog accounts my experience with Second Life, an immersive and upcoming virtual world that is completely based in cyber space. It is supposed to be an open source community that functions very much like how modern society does in reality, with money, jobs, status, property and educational opportunities.
There are however, several inherent flaws with this, primarily stemming again from the fact that it is an open-source based operation. After many unsuccessful executions of the Second-life environment, some network problems, and some unforeseen sexual advances, I finally managed to understand how the game works, including its interface, the places to go and the types of interactions that one can have in the “game”, if we were to call it that.
My first experience was to attempt something educational, so I searched all the educational events that were to transpire and decided to join an “Advanced Building and Texture Management” class. I guess, it was a fairly tricky class, as it had a prerequisite of the basic building classes that you needed to take before it, but I managed to learn a fair bit about object creation and manipulation. They mentioned things to do with the code level, but that seemed intangible for most people as they would question each other on how it all related. With regards, to how easy it is an environment to learn, I would believe it is a question of perception, I like it and could see it being a good learning environment, but would not condemn others if they say it as too virtual an environment to be conducive for learning. At the end of the day I guess I learnt what I went into learn, and that is how to play around with some of the advanced building options so I feel I got the essence of Second Life.
My second learning experience was attending a session on how to make money in Second Life, this was a much easier topic to comprehend and the environment was a lot more sociable, very similar to how real life is, as with the mood in a class depending on if it was Advanced Stochastic Theory or the Telecom Seminar class, where people are more relaxed and required to participate. So I believe Second Life caters to a wide variety of tastes in terms of topic etc.. I would be very interested to see how far reaching the benefits of this online community would extend to.
I mean forecasting this into the future, on the basis that most learning is done by younger people, is it possible to regulate some amount of “content security” so that I can be a less disturbing environment when there are people walking around nude? Food for thought: Is it really “nudity”?
There are however, several inherent flaws with this, primarily stemming again from the fact that it is an open-source based operation. After many unsuccessful executions of the Second-life environment, some network problems, and some unforeseen sexual advances, I finally managed to understand how the game works, including its interface, the places to go and the types of interactions that one can have in the “game”, if we were to call it that.
My first experience was to attempt something educational, so I searched all the educational events that were to transpire and decided to join an “Advanced Building and Texture Management” class. I guess, it was a fairly tricky class, as it had a prerequisite of the basic building classes that you needed to take before it, but I managed to learn a fair bit about object creation and manipulation. They mentioned things to do with the code level, but that seemed intangible for most people as they would question each other on how it all related. With regards, to how easy it is an environment to learn, I would believe it is a question of perception, I like it and could see it being a good learning environment, but would not condemn others if they say it as too virtual an environment to be conducive for learning. At the end of the day I guess I learnt what I went into learn, and that is how to play around with some of the advanced building options so I feel I got the essence of Second Life.
My second learning experience was attending a session on how to make money in Second Life, this was a much easier topic to comprehend and the environment was a lot more sociable, very similar to how real life is, as with the mood in a class depending on if it was Advanced Stochastic Theory or the Telecom Seminar class, where people are more relaxed and required to participate. So I believe Second Life caters to a wide variety of tastes in terms of topic etc.. I would be very interested to see how far reaching the benefits of this online community would extend to.
I mean forecasting this into the future, on the basis that most learning is done by younger people, is it possible to regulate some amount of “content security” so that I can be a less disturbing environment when there are people walking around nude? Food for thought: Is it really “nudity”?
Monday, March 12, 2007
Memo 8: Podcasting - The Doctrine of Content Distribution
This blog entry describes my personal induction to the podcast way of content distribution. The views expressed about the specific podcasts in this blog are based on my own experiences and are not in any way deliberatly intended to denigrate or nullify the efforts of its contributors.
"The word ”podcast” is a concatenation of the words iPod and broadcast. The underlying technology used for podcasts, called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is capable of containing any type of media including audio, video, graphics, and more."[1]
To me, podcasts represent yet another addition to an incresing number of highly granular sources that provide society and more fundametally humanity, with an opportunity to selectivly theme itself on an individual basis. What that basically means is that in today's day and age, we have choices that determine how we choose to opinionate ourselves based on readily available knowledge or accentuate our style and behaviour. Lets reflect chronologically on what I've just said, twenty years ago, people did not have that choice to expose themselves to whatever they wished to experience. We now have that opportunity. My intentions are not to force you to translate the podcast explosion, into a radical and direct transcendental form of wisdom; far from it, but it is an immersive way of incorporating our interests seamlessly into our daily lives, so in this sense it is a trusted state of consciousness that we are ready to inculcate.
The principles of podcasts are simple, podcasts are and can be auto-scheduled and portable deliveries of voice or video content, free or otherwise and has found its place in our daily lives, whether it be a form of time pass during our daily commuting, or simply for the sake of interest. I firmly believe that the podcasting way of delivery is still in its early stages of infancy, we are yet to assimilate exactly how large the podcast footprint actually is. Its a great opportunity to simply bask in the ambiance of a "Stanford Liberal Arts Coursecast" (one of the best I've ever listened to on an array of various topics) or learn the lessons of the past in the "Hardcore History" podcast, or simply learn a new tongue.
The benefits of free content is glaringly obvious, but lets not foget that the integrity of some of these casts are also questionable. Knowledge and its continuous pursuit are much like convictions of courage, summarised by the quote, "Courage is more than standing for a firm conviction. It includes the risk of questioning that conviction."[2]
I have purposefully split the content that I encountered in my experiences into 2 fairly self-evident categories below, The Good and (The Bad and Ugly).
The Good
Deloitte Insights Podcast - A podcast by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, on the subject of emerging markets and the dynamics of the competetive landscape of the converged communitywith a specialized focus on the evolution of Technology, Media and Telecommunications Business Models.
The Bad & Ugly
In this case the bad met ugly in perfect sync, this cast could possibly be the worst thing that could happen to the budding sport of cricket in the Americas. The podcast is called "Cricket America", first off don't let the name fool you into assuming that this podcast is official or that it represents material from any credible organisation. Far from it, it is a very amateur voice based cast of the state of the sport in the Americas, and is followed by a coaching section at the end for upcoming enthuisasts. What is put out to be a cocktail mix of the latest developments in the sport in the Americas with insightful tips to impove your game, turns out to be a mundane and inconsistent recital of the weeks results and shallow technical advice that lay out the blueprints for a cricketing fiasco, perhaps in the worst case, even bodily injury!
References
1. Apple
2. Julian Webber Gordon
"The word ”podcast” is a concatenation of the words iPod and broadcast. The underlying technology used for podcasts, called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is capable of containing any type of media including audio, video, graphics, and more."[1]
To me, podcasts represent yet another addition to an incresing number of highly granular sources that provide society and more fundametally humanity, with an opportunity to selectivly theme itself on an individual basis. What that basically means is that in today's day and age, we have choices that determine how we choose to opinionate ourselves based on readily available knowledge or accentuate our style and behaviour. Lets reflect chronologically on what I've just said, twenty years ago, people did not have that choice to expose themselves to whatever they wished to experience. We now have that opportunity. My intentions are not to force you to translate the podcast explosion, into a radical and direct transcendental form of wisdom; far from it, but it is an immersive way of incorporating our interests seamlessly into our daily lives, so in this sense it is a trusted state of consciousness that we are ready to inculcate.
The principles of podcasts are simple, podcasts are and can be auto-scheduled and portable deliveries of voice or video content, free or otherwise and has found its place in our daily lives, whether it be a form of time pass during our daily commuting, or simply for the sake of interest. I firmly believe that the podcasting way of delivery is still in its early stages of infancy, we are yet to assimilate exactly how large the podcast footprint actually is. Its a great opportunity to simply bask in the ambiance of a "Stanford Liberal Arts Coursecast" (one of the best I've ever listened to on an array of various topics) or learn the lessons of the past in the "Hardcore History" podcast, or simply learn a new tongue.
The benefits of free content is glaringly obvious, but lets not foget that the integrity of some of these casts are also questionable. Knowledge and its continuous pursuit are much like convictions of courage, summarised by the quote, "Courage is more than standing for a firm conviction. It includes the risk of questioning that conviction."[2]
I have purposefully split the content that I encountered in my experiences into 2 fairly self-evident categories below, The Good and (The Bad and Ugly).
The Good
Deloitte Insights Podcast - A podcast by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, on the subject of emerging markets and the dynamics of the competetive landscape of the converged communitywith a specialized focus on the evolution of Technology, Media and Telecommunications Business Models.The Bad & Ugly
In this case the bad met ugly in perfect sync, this cast could possibly be the worst thing that could happen to the budding sport of cricket in the Americas. The podcast is called "Cricket America", first off don't let the name fool you into assuming that this podcast is official or that it represents material from any credible organisation. Far from it, it is a very amateur voice based cast of the state of the sport in the Americas, and is followed by a coaching section at the end for upcoming enthuisasts. What is put out to be a cocktail mix of the latest developments in the sport in the Americas with insightful tips to impove your game, turns out to be a mundane and inconsistent recital of the weeks results and shallow technical advice that lay out the blueprints for a cricketing fiasco, perhaps in the worst case, even bodily injury!
References
1. Apple
2. Julian Webber Gordon
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Memo 7: Wikipedia, Friend or Foe?
How many of us, can contest not to have used or indirectly referenced material from Wikipedia? I doubt that there would many affirmatives on that account, and I believe the reason for that is really, really simple.
Firstly, a quick check on the various sources on the internet that provide insight on whether they view Wikipedia as a credible source will quickly elicit two major points. First, that most people find the material, fairly credible, and that is mostly derived through the fact that most people who have used material from Wikipedia have not really found themselves short on the reliability of the referenced material. The second point is that the general concensus on Wikipedia, is that it is a good source so long as we throw caution to the wind or word, so as to speak.
Wikipedia, is the first generation of open source content distribution, that decentralises information sources. Some journals revere it as an incredible manifestation of the world's knowledgeable open source community that exist out there, while others prefer to compare apples with apples with respect to established and more credible "encyclopedias", implying that Wikipedia can hardly be classified as an encyclopedia. Some food for thought; what exactly are the attributes of a credible source? Or more fundamentally, what exactly are the metrics of credibility? Why are peer-reviewed articles, less credible than "expert" reviews, when statistically the general concencus suggests otherwise? Who are we to blow the whistle on someone citing information from a particular source?
Well without getting too philosophical about the whole issue, I'd start by saying, Wikipedia, with just over 1.5 million english articles, is free and provides enough credibility for it to become the next website with the most number of hits, following in the footsteps of Google, which specialises specifically in Web related searches of pages, pictures and video. Wikipedia, of course specialises in knowledge, the collective knoweledge of the online community that represents a vociferous scourge to the traditional Encyclopedia publishers, whos effort translates, or is forced to translate to dollars. So if we hear an outcry about credibility, it just may be that the outcry sources are from the Encyclopedia camp. Frankly, I don't believe that anybody other than the original inventor/creator has rights to the knowledge that exists out there. So for an encyclopedia publisher to hold legal issues with Wikipedia, is completely out of the question. So if the information is equivalent, then I believe neither factions have the right to dipuste others ownership of material. To conclude that thought, I would feel indifferent about choosing from either of the two sources, and in most cases most research efforts validate the information they gather through a process of cross referencing.
Another important point, that a collegue of mine, Mr. Shashank Jagannath recently made on his blog [1], was whether revenue focused products, outweigh interest based ones, in terms of quality, and how the development of these respective products is observed to be at different stages in its growth. The core of this argument, can be extended to explain whether Open office is better than Microsoft Word, or vice versa, and can still be furthered to determine which will eventually be the better product? In any case, the fact that one is for free makes it a far more attractive option. One business model suggests that the internals of the organisation must be in sync to continue to make profit, whereas the other requires only that the contributors provide quality submissions to form the product as it goes out into the world as a working product at absolutely no cost.
References
1. Mr. P
Firstly, a quick check on the various sources on the internet that provide insight on whether they view Wikipedia as a credible source will quickly elicit two major points. First, that most people find the material, fairly credible, and that is mostly derived through the fact that most people who have used material from Wikipedia have not really found themselves short on the reliability of the referenced material. The second point is that the general concensus on Wikipedia, is that it is a good source so long as we throw caution to the wind or word, so as to speak.
Wikipedia, is the first generation of open source content distribution, that decentralises information sources. Some journals revere it as an incredible manifestation of the world's knowledgeable open source community that exist out there, while others prefer to compare apples with apples with respect to established and more credible "encyclopedias", implying that Wikipedia can hardly be classified as an encyclopedia. Some food for thought; what exactly are the attributes of a credible source? Or more fundamentally, what exactly are the metrics of credibility? Why are peer-reviewed articles, less credible than "expert" reviews, when statistically the general concencus suggests otherwise? Who are we to blow the whistle on someone citing information from a particular source?
Well without getting too philosophical about the whole issue, I'd start by saying, Wikipedia, with just over 1.5 million english articles, is free and provides enough credibility for it to become the next website with the most number of hits, following in the footsteps of Google, which specialises specifically in Web related searches of pages, pictures and video. Wikipedia, of course specialises in knowledge, the collective knoweledge of the online community that represents a vociferous scourge to the traditional Encyclopedia publishers, whos effort translates, or is forced to translate to dollars. So if we hear an outcry about credibility, it just may be that the outcry sources are from the Encyclopedia camp. Frankly, I don't believe that anybody other than the original inventor/creator has rights to the knowledge that exists out there. So for an encyclopedia publisher to hold legal issues with Wikipedia, is completely out of the question. So if the information is equivalent, then I believe neither factions have the right to dipuste others ownership of material. To conclude that thought, I would feel indifferent about choosing from either of the two sources, and in most cases most research efforts validate the information they gather through a process of cross referencing.
Another important point, that a collegue of mine, Mr. Shashank Jagannath recently made on his blog [1], was whether revenue focused products, outweigh interest based ones, in terms of quality, and how the development of these respective products is observed to be at different stages in its growth. The core of this argument, can be extended to explain whether Open office is better than Microsoft Word, or vice versa, and can still be furthered to determine which will eventually be the better product? In any case, the fact that one is for free makes it a far more attractive option. One business model suggests that the internals of the organisation must be in sync to continue to make profit, whereas the other requires only that the contributors provide quality submissions to form the product as it goes out into the world as a working product at absolutely no cost.
References
1. Mr. P
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Wikipedia Entry 2/26/07
I made this entry on the Virtual Concatenation protocol standard, its pretty interesting for the techies out there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_concatenation
Enjoy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_concatenation
Enjoy
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