OT: anyone been crazy enough to mirror wikipedia?

[DAve]

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org 
>> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Chad Perrin
>> Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 10:05 PM
>> To: FreeBSD Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: OT: anyone been crazy enough to mirror wikipedia?
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 05:15:39PM -0400, DAve wrote:
>>> Steve Franks wrote:
>>>> So call me a sociopath, but times are a bit scary.  I'd like to do the
>>>> 2000's equivalent of the 1960's bomb shelter, and have my very own
>>>> snapshot in case of major local/regional internet disruption, etc.
>>>>
>>>> What would be the best way to go about this.  I see with <1T words, it
>>>> appears doable on current technology.  Maybe they should offer a
>>>> snapshot on DVDs or disk as a fundraiser?  I'd drop $300 for some sort
>>>> of officially licenced copy, I suspect there are other freaks that
>>>> would too...
>>> When the world gets that bad, Wikipedia is the least of my concerns, 
>>> slightly ahead of who is winning American Idol. If it comes to 
>> the point 
>>> the internet goes down for a long period of time, that $300 is better 
>>> spent on a garden.
>>>
>>> Just my thoughts.
>> Actually . . . if things get that bad, you're going to need some
>> firepower to protect your garden (and everything else you don't want
>> taken from you by force).  To properly protect a garden, you'd need to
>> make it a community farm, with community members who have and will use
>> firearms to protect it (and your Wikipedia mirror).
>>
>> Of course, I greatly admire the impulse to protect the collected
>> knowledge of Wikipedia from disaster.  It's also practical -- because it
>> contains a lot of information that might be of use (including good
>> subsistence gardening information, for those of us who don't have
>> naturally green thumbs).
>>
> 
> If the crash comes and you don't have 4 - 5 years of experience
> running a garden on your land, plus your own well, your gonna starve.
> 
> Veggies are very particular as to the kind of soil they like, and the
> light and water they get.  And it takes several years of trying different
> ones to figure out the ones that do best in your soil.  And most modern
> veggies are hybrids  and the seed is genetically engineered, and patented.
> Many varieties are, in fact, sterile.  Many others require irrigation to
> produce sizable yields.
> 
> To put in a "heritage" garden that will produce given the normally
> occurring rainfall in your area takes someone with many years of
> experience in your area growing gardens.  By the time you would
> be able to get one going from info in wikipedia, you would have
> died of starvation.
> 
> Ted

Some of us will have veggies/skills/water for trade. But what he says is 
true. It ain't as easy as read a page, plant a row. If I have a question 
on FreeBSD, Wikipedia is my last resort, after phone calls. While it is 
useful I suppose to some, I would never base a decision on anything I 
read there. It is useful for key words and topics to expand a search 
through better sources, but not much else. If Wikipedia is killing 
Encyclopedia sales, it is because people are willing to accept 
mediocrity over accuracy if accuracy comes at a price and mediocrity is 
free.

It has been my experience, maybe things have changed, that a hardbound 
reference book is the equivalent of asking Bunny Watson for an answer, 
and Wikipedia is like asking Cliffy on Cheers.

DAve


-- 
Don't tell me I'm driving the cart!