User talk:MFNickster

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[edit] Welcome!

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, you can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: ~~~. Four tildes (~~~~) produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! TDS (talk • contribs) 23:39, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] mac os x

just wanted to say nice trim on the mac os x intro there.

good work! :)

--Yoasif 17:26, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Ah, thank you! It's sometimes hard to get the essence of the article into the intro without removing good information. I hope it was an improvement!
MFNickster 17:35, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you trimmed out a fundamental information about Mac OSX, being that OSX cannot be considered an operating system on its own. That has to be specified. Please refer to the discussion page of MAC OSX and Darwin OS. Luxiake 19:14, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I did try to keep that in the article, as I think it was already implied by the information on Darwin OS. It doesn't really belong in the introduction, which should be as concise and non-confusing as possible. Anyway, I've made another revision to include that perspective explicitly in the 'Description' section, which I hope will be an acceptable compromise. MFNickster 22:53, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

OK I apologize if I flamed in the discussion/editing. You are a good guy, you did a very good work. You included my claims in the description good night Luxiake 23:40, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rhapsody

Please read this (fingers crossed that link works for you). Does it seem to you that Rhapsody was intended as a codename? AlistairMcMillan 12:07, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Never mind. [1] AlistairMcMillan 12:18, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Hi Alistair! Thanks for your diligence. At the time, Apple had already been using music-themed code names for the OS strategy (Copland, Gershwin, Sonata, etc.) and hadn't released anything under its code name. The biggest change was from "System 7.x" to "MacOS 7.6." Also "Rhapsody" sounds to me like it might be more suitable for an application, not system software - so I guess while it's possible they had intended it as a release name, it seemed pretty unlikely to me. MFNickster 16:33, 11 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Parallel GPUs

I saw you edited out my comment about GPUs being parallel. You say some are not, and I ask which? Every chip since 1999 or so has contained superscalar pipelines, while those were integer only. Today every mainstream graphics processor I know of is floating point-based with many parallel pipelines, certainly all that are being used for GPGPU work. The inherent ability to parallize graphics functions is what has gotten the tech to where it is today. --Swaaye 00:53, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your comments. You didn't actually specify GPUs, you wrote "graphics chips" which could include things like the VGA controller and even the old Atari and Amiga chips. You also didn't specify "today", so rather than try to guess what you meant, I reverted it. I did think you probably meant GPUs (from context in the discussion about GPGPUs). Feel free to have another go - but please take care that your addition doesn't repeat information already in the article. It has too many redundancies as it is (we should probably condense the "History" and "Current GPU capabilities" sections). - MFNickster 02:12, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah I can see where you're coming from. I was a bit too general. Perhaps I will write up something a bit more specific. --Swaaye 02:36, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Marking reverts as minor

FYI - regarding your revert to the Margaret Sanger article, it is considered poor etiquette to mark reversions as minor. Even though you felt it was a clear correction, others may have felt otherwise. I personally would only mark reverts as minor if I was correcting vandalism. See Help:Minor edit for details.

Okay, thanks! I wasn't aware of that. MFNickster 14:09, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Margaret Sanger

You quickly removed the reference to Katharine Houghton, who also had Corning, NY connections. You might want to check out [Katharine Hepburn|Katharine Houghton] and you might realize your error. Katharine Houghton was the mother of actress Katherine Hepburn, a suffragette, and birth control advocate, who, along with Margaret Sanger, helped to found the organization that became Planned Parenthood. Please restore Margaret Sanger's page to include the reference to Houghton, as Sanger did not create Planned Parenthood on her own. Thank you for your consideration.

Hi, thanks for your comments. Feel free to sign them with four tildes (~). I understand Houghton's role in the movement, but technically Margaret Sanger didn't create Planned Parenthood either. There were a number of organizations which continued to change, split, and merge, and at the time (1922) if I'm not mistaken, Katherine Houghton was involved only with a Connecticut organization that later became part of Planned Parenthood. She didn't actually meet Sanger until 1928, and she was not on the board of the ABCL or an officer in the organization. Any other information you have is appreciated, but we should probably put it on the discussion page for the article, not here. MFNickster 18:09, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I am good with that. It sounds like you have more information about this matter than others. Thank you. MChiBro 19:03, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Margaret Sanger update

Excellent job on your edit to the Legacy section of the Margaret Sanger article. That is exactly what that article needs: a more NPOV tone and better citation. I appreciate the effort! --JerryOrr 21:05, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Jerry. It's difficult to keep the factual information without cites, but it's also difficult to find cites sometimes because so little is written about her objectively. Especially regarding the quote situation - the 'anti-Sanger' sites tend to feed on each other without giving primary references. MFNickster 21:52, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CT

Wikipedia is not a dictionary. There is a link to wiktionary entry. This is a disambiguation page for navigation between articles about subjects than may have the same name, not a list of abbreviations. Please read wikipedia:Disambiguation policy. You can have hundreds of abbreviations in wikrionary, which is the proper place for them. I am not at all a censor here. For example, I have been working hard to keep the picture of poop in the Human feces article. `'mikka (t) 06:04, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

That makes a certain amount of sense, but then why did you not remove the entries for carton, contact, and Cryptologic Technician, none of which have existing articles to elaborate? MFNickster 06:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I did remove some, on a quick glance. The first two may go as well, you are right.`'mikka (t) 06:58, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:MacBook

You're right. My mistake on the unsigned notice. jareha (comments) 08:10, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] talk atheism

I understand your plyth, however please refrain from "interjecting" your comments with-in the statement I made. This would be greatly appreciated. Somerset219 05:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I do that to address a point without having to follow text that goes beyond the point I'm addressing. As long as it's indented properly, I don't think there's anything wrong with it - but feel free to move my comments around as you please (just leave them intact). MFNickster 05:34, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
P.S. - what's a plyth? MFNickster
I apologize, I meant plight; obviously I rarely use the word. Somerset219 01:11, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I understand where your coming from, however when you start a seperate debate with in someones statement it can become unreadable. Not only that, the argument/debate can last so long as you wont be able to know who made the original statement; as their signature was at the end, now no where to be seen. just giving you a heads up. Somerset219 01:50, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I am looking for support to the idea that religion should not be listed on the biographical entries for every American politician. In federal politicians. To me it's personal information that is irrelevant to our elected officials. There seem to be some users here who have taken it upon themselves to identify the religion of most federal office holders. One place this is evident is on the infoboxes, for example

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_Congressmanelect

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Infobox_Congressman

Don't know what your opinion on this might be, but looking for some support to try to take religion out of politics.--Utahredrock 21:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unspecified source for Image:Sagan_Viking_parody.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Sagan_Viking_parody.jpg. I notice the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this file yourself, then you need to specify who owns the copyright, please. If you got it from a website, then a link to the website where it was taken from with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher then their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Fair use, use a tag such as {{Non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 01:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. MECU≈talk 01:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Margaret Sanger

Your last edit to Margaret Sanger was reverted, for testing please use please use the the sandbox. Thank you--Migospia†♥ 02:31, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi, what is your basis for reverting my edit? Do you have some suggestions to improve it? Thanks. MFNickster 02:31, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


Query about Sanger page: That page is so contentious I don't want to get involved over there... but the final sentence of the starting/summary paragraph : "However, her racist ideology and advocacy for eugenics are positions which have not survived her." I honestly don't know what it means. Is there not racism today? Is eugenics not a real position (unpopular, discredited, yes) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.19.6.125 (talk) 17:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Weasel Program article

I've added the following to the talk page for "weasel":

Identification of beneficial change in biology?

The program is a vivid demonstration that the preservation of small changes in an evolving string of characters (or genes) can produce meaningful combinations in a relatively short time, as long as there is some mechanism to identify and preserve desirable changes while allowing undesirable changes to be removed or replaced. This is intended to serve as an analogy to natural selection's action on randomly mutating genomes, with the "desirability" (or fitness) of any given change being determined by the organism's interaction with its environment.

The struck-out words correspond to an edit I made on the article, with this comment: "No necessity for identification of beneficial change, therefore removed."

This change was reverted by MFNickster with this comment: "(rv - in the case of the Weasel program, yes, comparing the phrase to a target amounts to identifying such improvements)"

I think it should be clear that the stated reason for the revert is unjustified. 1. The section in question is not specifically about "weasel"; it is about biology as well, and there is no "identification" of beneficial parts. 2. Even in "weasel", there is no "identification" of the part that conferred benefit. The string match does not cause particular desirable changes of the "genome" to be preserved, contra the article's statement. This constitutes an error in the article, and should be removed expeditiously. --Wesley R. Elsberry (talk) 05:13, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of Carbon applications

Hello. Since you have contributed to this article in the past, could you spare a minute to discuss the fate of this article? xpclient (talk) 12:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC)