User talk:Cognita

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Contents 1 Re mistakes in ID 1.1 Macfix 2 Ellipsis and brackets 3 Whachoo callin' theories 4 The Prestige (film) 5 Talk page discussion 6 Doorbell

[edit] Re mistakes in ID

Cognita, we generally handle quotes and book titles as they're presented by the author/publisher. With respect to the particular title you were referring to, please see this rendering. ... Kenosis 04:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Cognita, when editing Wiki, it's not true WYSIWYG was editing allows for writing in a simple mark-up language. So, if you want to use an asterisk at the beginning of a line, you need to use the "no-wiki" function, e.g.,

*

Anyway, you can remove the etc., and the they should be "proponents". As for Gonzalez, he was speaking for the Discovery Institute, and as all proponents of ID are associated with the Institute, "they" refers to "proponents.

Also, keep in mind that you need to be very careful with your editing. Whenever there is a reference you should check the reference to verify that a change in grammar or punctuation is appropriate (this is an add-on to what Kenosis noted above). Thus, we see one of the dangers of copy editing -- if one is unfamiliar with the subject, the edits, while supported by the Chicago Manual of Style, may change the meaning intended by the author, thus leading to a mistatement of fact.

Overall, though, I think your edits have been a great improvement to the article, and I appreciate your taking the time to do them as I was too busy to do the editing myself. If you're unsure on something, feel free to ask. Of course, I suppose we could add [sic] to items that appear to be grammatically wrong, but I'd rather not as that will open a whole new set of arguments. •Jim62sch• 16:40, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I corrected the "denies any need bit" (it was rather awkward) -- see [1] •Jim62sch• 17:11, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Change "cannot be sustained" to "cannot be sustained scientifically", then. The point is, that the introduction of a supernatural entity erases any ability to explain ID scientifically. As I didn't write original sentence (I think FeloniousMonk did) you might want to get his opinion before making any further changes beyond what I suggested. •Jim62sch• 19:19, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

BTW, "re-factor" and "refactor" aren't in Webster or the OED. Personally, I despise that neologism, but that's just my opinion. •Jim62sch• 13:25, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Cognita, you really need to work on your computer issues. Have you defragged?  ;)

Anyway, I'll avoid sending you to the talk page when possible. I agree with hyphenating the re, and although I'd prefer another word, I've yet to think of one.

One other thing, I'm partial to the OED -- yes, I'm a linguistic snob.  ;) •Jim62sch• 20:00, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Charcoal, eh? I at least had clay tablets.  ;)

Infinity does kind of screw up his calculations, but so does the method he used: he worked backward from a pre-cocieved notion and then created the math to fit his hypothesis. Additionally, Dembski doesn't seem to care about the forest -- it's too dark and scary in there. Or to paraphrase Dante, "In the middle of our life's journey I found myself in a dark wood, I had lost my way." •Jim62sch• 13:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I changed re-factored to revised -- it reads better.

Oh, go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools and Disk Cleanup and let that run. Then, go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools and Disk Defragmenter and defrag. It might help.

Yes, I used PC terms, sorry about that, although Disk First Aid should be the equivalent. This site might help, though [2]. How much RAM do you have?

Anyway, from a non-math perspective you are correct about the serious flaws in Dembski's thought process. He uses a bizarre form of post hoc ergo propter hoc (the rooster crows at sunrise, therefore the rooster made the sun rise), for precicely the reason you mention: psychology. Humans cannot truly deal with randomness, we (as a species) prefer order. This also explains why so few people understand probability (a fact Dembski feeds on) and why so much money is lost playing the lottery.

For an excellent debunking of the math, see [3]

Dawkins sometimes seems a bit frazzled in debates, and he has a tendency to fall for strawmen. He's a much better writer than debater. •Jim62sch• 20:06, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Dembski "believes" what he is writing, but he knows that the way he has phrased the argument will appeal to creationists who want to pretend creationism is science. He also knows that, as John Allen Paulos pointed out, the United States is a nation awash in innumeracy and thus Dembski's formulas will be acceptged by the run of the mill idiot who cannot comprehend that while the odds of heads vs tails is 50:50, there is absolutely nothing that precludes 20 heads in succession as successive results are not dependant on previous results; or who thinks that because 112 has not come out on the lottery in almost three years it is "due" to come out, or that since 517 came out yesterday, there's no point in playing it for three years.

In any case, I think Dembski is rather disingenuous, and he, like Rush Limbaugh, shuns any debate he cannot control. )[4]).

I had seriously thought of saying Dawkins was being too kind, but then I thought that maybe I was being too subjective. So, you noticed that, too, eh? Might just be kindnes then.

I'll ask my employees tomorrow if any of them know about defragging a MAC with OS9 (I'm an IT manager, but we work in a PC environment, so we'll see -- I can think of only one guy who is likely to know the answer, but someone else might surprise me.) •Jim62sch• 13:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Macfix

Sorry to butt in, but I was looking through Jim's page to try to keep up with things and noticed this wee problem. Defragmentation (as it tends to be called in mac documents) may not be the first thing to do to speed things up, but anyway here's how:

Option 1. buy or otherwise obtain a disc optimisation program - Norton Speed Disk was perhaps the best. Good idea if you can get it cheap or you're flush with cash, but if the latter why not update to OS X 10.2 or 10.3? I've got a G3 466 iBook laptop which runs very nicely on 10.3. But I digress..

Option 2. back up your whole hard drive to another hard drive, preferably by firewire (or SCSI if that's what you have, if not USB will probably work ok but try getting advice first): just drag the computer hard drive icon onto the icon for the other hard drive and wait. When it's done, click on the apple menu, go to startup disc and there select the other drive which should show up as having a system folder. Select that, click restart and your mac should now start up from that disc. Erase your hard drive (using Disk First Aid, if memory serves me well) then copy all the files, or at least the system folder and things you really want, back to your hard drive, make that the startup disc and restart. Sorted - and as you should be backing up anyway, much cheaper.

If you've been running for a while it's probably a good thing to do one of the above. However my Macs for Dummies by the excellent David Pogue suggests a couple of other things first:

Start the computer while holding down the option (alt) and apple (blooby shape) keys. When the mac asks if you want to rebuild the desktop, click OK.

From the apple menu, select Control Panels then Memory, and check that virtual memory (if on, which is likely) is set no higher than twice the actual memory installed.

There are some other troubleshooting things that might be worth trying: don't hesitate to ask, though I'll just be looking at my old books and trying to remember how to... dave souza, talk 23:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

First off, rebuilding the desktop is one of these daft phrases like zapping the PRAM (which is another easy thing to try, though that requires redoing your control panel settings) and all it does is renew an invisible database that stores all the info on your desktop, bringing it back to where you had it with all the icons etc., but with luck speeded up a bit. Gotta go to bed now, but 320mb ram is what my G3 has. and as I recall virtual memory at 321mb is a good thing for some reason. Is your iBook the two colour clamshell type like mine, does it have firewire as well as USB ports, and what speed is it? ("about this mac" under the apple menu should tell you) Have you got system install or restore CDs? It can involve a bit of restoring settings, but a clean install is a way of overcoming puzzling problems. Will be in touch. ... dave souza, talk 01:45, 18 November 2006 (UTC) revised 01:52, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Right, good news as you've the same iBook as mine (which is grey and white, yours may differ) and as far as I'm concerned it's as fast on OS X as on OS 9, as well as being much more stable and running my OS 9 applications as quickly as before in Classic. However, you may be running a very demanding program – perhaps QuarkXpress which took about forever to become available to work on OS X, so that's something to check before making a drastic move. The firewire port is excellent, it's really well worthwhile getting an external firewire hard drive: they allow you to back up very quickly and reboot from the drive: not the cheapest hard drives, but there's not that much in the price. If you've got or can obtain an older iPod that has firewire that's a (perhaps pricey) option: the newer ones use USB2 which is about as fast, but our clamshells have USB1 which is much slower. Probably something to ask a mac dealer about.

Probably the next thing to question is, why do you think the mac's slow? This started with an over-large talk page taking a long time to load: if you're using dial-up and your computer's modem that could be part of the explanation: dial-up is just slower than broadband, and speeds can vary depending on how your telephone line is set up. Another possibility is simply that Wikipedia servers get overloaded and run slow at times.

It may just be that our expectations differ - Windows tends to be snappier feeling at some things, though if you're used to an older mac that shouldn't matter. Some programs such as Quark and Photoshop are just very demanding, and patience is needed - when the G3 came out it was a big jump in speed, and users no longer went for a cup of coffee after setting a filter going. I'm now using a G4 800 iBook which my son had for a while, and it's quicker but not that dramatic a difference.

Anyway, the first thing to do is to back up your essential information, especially work you've done / documents etc. If you can find a second-hand manual such as Macs for Dummies for OS 9 that will help a lot: As for a disc optimising program, again you'll need an old enough one for OS 9 if you go for that: see if you can get one reasonably priced – they commonly came as part of a package: Norton Speed Disk often with their SystemWorks, alternatives probably include Alsoft Diskwarrior and Techtool Pro. However that's just an option, the main thing is to back up documents etc. before doing much more: a clean install might help, but defragmenting's the next step MfD recommends for slowness problems. Let me know how things go. ... dave souza, talk 09:35, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

It was always an irritation to me, but no, Disk First Aid doesn't do defragmentation. OS X doesn't provide a program for it either, but it automatically defrags smaller files in the background and there's an argument that you shouldn't do more than that. However the problems you describe seem to relate specifically to IE, with iCab being slower. Are other websites better than Wikipedia? I changed to OS X before finding Wiki, so haven't tried it with IE on OS 9: just tried it with IE 5.2 on OS X and it seemed reasonably quick at loading. I've just left my Wikipedia editing preferences on default: one hint is to copy the section you're editing and work on it in a separate text editor - maybe you're doing that already.

It could be that your copy of IE is corrupted in some way, so try saving all your user settings for IE onto a backup, take a note of any settings you need to adjust then try reinstalling it: perhaps move the old copy to the trash first. Another trick to try first is to quit IE, then go into its folder and click on the program icon to highlight it. From the file menu choose "Get info" and you get a dialog box with the name of the program, and (probably, I'm looking at OS 8.5 instructions) below that a drop down menu with "Show" to its left: choose Memory from the list, and it should show memory: suggested size, minimum size and preferred size. The last one will be at the suggested size - try making it say 10% bigger, then close the window.

If both these tricks fail, a clean install is the next step: that sets aside your system folder, and creates a fresh new uncorrupted system folder with all the custom settings needing to be reset - you can do quite a lot by comparing it with the previous system folder and transferring things across. It takes a bit of disc space, presumably you've got 10GB or so, and hopefully it's half empty. More on how to do that if needed - have to do things now rather than copying out instructions. .. dave souza, talk 21:21, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ellipsis and brackets

I'd just like to point out The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (ISBN 0-87352-986-3) recommends enclosing ellipses in square brackets when omitting text from a quotation. It seems a bit of an overstatement to simply say "they don't belong" when one of the top three academic style guides recommends it. Simões (^talk/_contribs) 03:53, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, the "research papers" to which the title of the handbook refers are ones that are suitable for publication (usually in academic journals). This style guide must therefore be considered in the same context as the two you mention. I think the MLA rationale is that an original text to be quoted will sometimes already have an ellipsis. Thus, bracketing off ellipses used to denote omission can eliminate syntactic ambiguity. Simões (^talk/_contribs) 04:50, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course, this isn't a research paper, it's an on-line encyclopedia. For our purposes, I do not see that the "MLA rationale" argument is germane. However, since WP:MOS is silent on the issue, and since you feel so strongly about it, I suggest that you propose on MOS's talk page that the [...] style be adopted. This will mean that thousands of articles will need to be changed, but be that as it may. •Jim62sch• 10:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Whachoo callin' theories

Very good point. I changed it to make more sense (I think) •Jim62sch• 22:51, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I made a tweak, but most of what you wrote is there. Wish I could help you with your computer problems, but I'm not very familiar with MACs. •Jim62sch• 14:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Prestige (film)

You wrote on my user page:

Editing on "The Prestige" (film)

Elf, you noted that the plot summary of The Prestige needs more work... we had a clear, coherent, accurate, and grammatical plot summary a few days ago... Can you help?

I feel foolish at not having looked at the page history & discussion before doing my own edits. Getting out of practice being wikipedian, I guess. I just saw your message and skimmed the page and the history and I don't think I can really contribute at this point. It's always a challenge with an article about a hot topic (e.g., a new, popular film) because everyone in the known universe is likely to pop in and make edits. It'll die down eventually. It looks as if progress is slowly occurring, but I know it's sometimes frustrating. I'm not on WP much any more these days. Elf | Talk 01:21, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I just wanted to congratulate you on the fantastic work you've done on The Prestige. I would like to get started on the lead section in the next few days, and eventually fix the theme section. —Viriditas | Talk 06:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Cognita, I've enjoyed your work on The Prestige. Your and Viriditas' contributions have done much to make it an informative and interesting article. I've taken an interest in it because I enjoy the Nolans' work (and they did an excellent job adapting the novel for the screen), and my son had the pleasure of working on the film. When the movie opened I initially enjoyed following the postings at IMDB's message boards, but quickly became frustrated with the too-widely varying interpretations of the movies events and themes. The discussion here on Wikipedia has been refreshingly intelligent and insightful. Keep up the good work. Jim Dunning 02:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Cognita: did you notice the addition of two new characters? 69.119.119.178 added a "Young Robert Angier" and a six-year-old daughter of Angier, Miranda (I've removed them). I checked and there's no reference to these two on any cast listing and I certainly don't recall them from the version of the film I saw. Do the characters ring a bell for you?

[edit] Talk page discussion

Hi, Cognita. I know that you and Jim have only the best intentions, but it's probably best to only use Sarah's talk page for communication with her directly. If you want to point her to an ongoing discussion, simply leave her a link. Regarding the discussion, have you reviewed WP:AFD procedures and the proposed new policy WP:CHILD? —Viriditas | Talk 20:36, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm willing to help, but I can't find any record of an AfD discussion. Did it go under another name? How do you know the article was slated for deletion? Once we have the correct information, we can ask an admin to carry out the task. —Viriditas | Talk 23:49, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

It looks like the article was deleted in October, 2005 as non-notable, but recreated on 18:24, 2 January 2006 by Halperin (talk • contribs), allegedly meeting the notability criteria. It looks like you'll have to re-nominate the article. —Viriditas | Talk 03:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

In response to your query about where the discussion should take place, anything directly related to the topic and not to Sarah herself, should for the most part, take place on the talk page of the article in question. I don't mean to sound like a control freak, but there's a reason for this. You can imagine what her talk page would look like if discussions on topics took place there. Like most admins, she's busy holding down the fort, nevermind the fact that's she's very popular, so our footprint should be light; we don't want to overwhelm her or anyone else for that matter. Some users will actualy remove topical discussions on their talk page, and place them on the talk page of the article. Of course, if the discussion is between you and the user, then the user talk page is ok, especially when you need to alert a user about a discussion taking place: just leave a link, instead. You're a new user, so you wouldn't really have any way of knowing this. —Viriditas | Talk 00:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Viriditas, your point is well-taken, but Cognita has valid concerns as well: we need a central location to discuss this. Since I'm already leaving this message on Cognita's discussion page, how about if we do it here (I agree we shouldn't continue it on The Prestige's disc page since the vandalism is happening literally on hundreds of pages and we also don't want the vandal to watch over our shoulders while we figure this out; also, if we need Sarah's help then we can concisely pose our request to her then).

We have two issues: (1) we have a vandal, probably immature, who goes on edit-sprees of dozens of pages at a time; and (2) a likely underage "contributor" who posts identifying information about himself and his family not just on his bio-article page, but everywhere else he can. As to the first issue, he has been banned, but I agree with Cognita that the ban should be permanent. The pattern of resuming the vandalism as soon as the ban expires will continue, so temporary bans are useless. If the vandal is indeed 13 years-old, we shouldn't be surprised. Cleaning up after him is a lot of work, though. We should ask Sarah or another Admin what the options are.

As to the second issue, I read the proposed policy Viriditas referred me to on underage contributors. It's clear that "Zach", if it is him, is indeed in violation. I'm unsure what we do here though, since it is only in the proposal stage. I'm a teacher and parent so I'm keenly aware of the risks this kid is taking, especially if he irritates others on the Internet with his behavior (inside 5 minutes of searching I know the family's address and phone, the children's names and what middle school they attend, the name of mom's baby accessories business and what temple they go to!).

I suppose if we're able to get him banned permanently the identity problem is solved until he logs in under another user name, but it should be easy to recognize him, especially if another Zach Tyler page appears. The trick would be to get him banned again quickly. Of course, he probably thinks this is all very funny and is waiting for another chance to harass us and other serious contributors. Doing some of the clean-up work was such a pain, I was tempted to find an email address for either of his parents and alert them to what was going on. Any thoughts or ideas are welcome. So much fun. Jim Dunning 02:42, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I checked the the AFD deleted article and all it said was: "Zach Tyler Eisen also does the voice of Pablo from Nick Jr.'s Backyardigans." So this version is a substantially different version and should probably go back to AFD, as much as I'd love to speedy it right now. For the record, I am happy for my talk page to be used for discussion as long as everyone understands that I might not reply quickly. :) Sarah Ewart 03:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

(Reposting after edit conflict; bumped into Sarah just now) Having the discussion here is fine with me. Sarah's page has a new post by JD Fan, who maintains another page Zach hit. JD Fan wants a permanent ban. I told him/her of the previous discussion on Sarah's page.

I think, regardless of what happens about bans, Z's parents should be told what he's doing, because it endangers their family. I'd send them a letter, but what if Z opens the mail? Then the letter wouldn't reach them, and – eek! – he'd have my contact info. It's also possible that he has access to their e-mail at home. Now, if Jim was speaking literally about having found his mother's business, one of us could pursue communicating with her there.

Sarah, if that's all Zach's article said, much has been removed. His article as of earlier today gave his mother's and sister's names, the name of his middle school, and much else. Those items alone are too much for the family's safety. The article's talk page says a decision to delete was made some time ago. Does the decision process have to be repeated? Cognita 03:13, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant that is what the article which was deleted after the AFD said (admins can look at deleted pages).

I extended the block on the IP to 6 months but I don't feel comfortable going longer than that since IPs can be changed and some innocent person might end up with it. I'd rather reblock in another 6 months if necessary. Under the speedy deletion criteria G4, the article can only be speedied as a repost if it is "a substantially identical copy". This article is quite different to the previous article so it should really go back to AfD. Sarah Ewart 03:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I have a tendency to be fiercely overprotective, so I apologize. Sarah has expressed an interest in having the discussion on her talk page, so I won't interfere. I still maintain that the best place for centralized discussion is on the talk page of the article, but Cognita has made a case for special circumstances, and I don't want to appear stubborn or inflexible. If the article returns to AfD, admins and editors are more likely to see the discussion on the article talk page. —Viriditas | Talk 03:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

There's no need to apologize. :) I agree an article's talk page is the best place to talk about an article. Sarah Ewart 03:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I've deleted the the article's history to remove all that personal info. Sarah Ewart 04:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into the vandalism problem - much appreciated!

User:JD_Fan

Sarah, thanks from me too, for extending the block and removing the hot info — especially for the latter action. Maybe there should be an article about Zach. If what I've read elsewhere on WP can be trusted, he voices the lead role in a Nickelodeon cartoon series for kids, Avatar, that's a WP special project. That may make him notable enough in some sector of WP to merit an article even though he isn't notable in my world (I'm not a kid, and we don't have cable). He just shouldn't reveal private stuff. He should also not write his own bio, but that may be unenforceable.

The discussion landed on your page because it began as a request for help with vandalism. It turned into a discussion of the article on Zach because the specifics of the vandal's changes to The Prestige suggested that Zach was the vandal. His vandalism and his article are separate topics, but related; maybe he invades articles on films to give himself fictitious film credits so he can appear more notable and save his article from deletion. Or maybe he only does this to impress his friends. Anyway, I'm just flopping around here while I learn how the place works. Cognita 06:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

You did everything right, it's just that I've seen Sarah's talk page get so busy in the past, I felt bad for her, and I thought we could help cut down on her clutter by keeping the discussion somewhere else. You wouldn't believe how busy her talk page gets. It's clearly not my role to control entropy (or to pretend that I'm her secretary, heh). —Viriditas | Talk 07:44, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Doorbell

Yeah, LOL, I do a lot of vandalism-reverting (by my count I've reverted about 35,000 separate instances, more or less, since I've been on Wikipedia). Looking at the article, here is your latest version versus the last by Yuckfoo: [5]. I think it is all right, but I'll do one more quick check. I think you got it all. Cheers! Antandrus (talk) 04:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Adding one more bit: welcome to Wikipedia. Really. We need more copy editors here; there is so much that can be made better here by a skilled editor.  :) Antandrus (talk) 05:09, 11 December 2006 (UTC)