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All very good points and all very well taken... Your point regarding the US/Euro difference is really well taken and something I personally had not even considred until now... On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 01:00:58 -0800, Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@r...> wrote: > 1) If there are 8 billion Web pages, there is no way anyone can rate > even a meaningful subset of them by hand. Google's voting system, while > imperfect, strikes me as a pretty good way to do this automatically. > > 2) The problem with any system of "experts" is deciding who the experts > are. Main-stream journalism may at least be fact-checked, but it's not > clear the world will ever agree that those writing about a particular > topic are indeed "experts" to anyone beside their peers. If you don't > believe this, read US and European articles about the same topic and see > if you think they're even covering the same event. > > 3) The Web is a like a great, big bar with a zillion drunken > conversations. You'll meet some interesting people, discover some > dubious facts, and have a good time, but anyone who trusts it implicitly > is asking for trouble, and all the ratings in the world are never going > to convince the black helicopter crowd [1] that the UN isn't really > invading the US. > > -- Ron > > [1] For non-US readers, there are a number of people in the US who are > convinced the UN is out to conquer the US militarily. For example, see > http://sss.org/lbh/helos.html, or just get the T-shirt at > http://www.jeffersonstate.com/blackhelicoptercrowd.html. And while it is > easy to dismiss such people as lunatics, you might not want to do so to > their face in a crowded bar. > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an > initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> > > The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ > > To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription > manager: <http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/index.php> > > -- <M:D/> :: M. David Peterson :: XML & XML Transformations, C#, .NET, and Functional Languages Specialist
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