MsTopeka

My family prayer

I was born into this world thinking that my family was my family. From what I can recall, my family was probably Family. Through middle age, I interacted with my family, but I was outside of the Family. Then I was suddenly reborn in an instant by asking to talk to a member of my family that had passed. The Lord answered me, not my grandfather.

Years later, I find my family is not in the Family, and that I am alone in the Family, my family absent. Then my young child tells me, “We have a family”. Moments later, I realize that he might mean, “We have a Family”. But how could he know the difference at age 4? I had to be reborn to know the difference. My child seems to know already. I am blessed with him, again.

The Lord gives me no burden greater than I can bear. I call myself an apologist, and He increases the load. He shows me the family in the world, tempted by the love of money and the father of all lies. My mother lies, my father lies, my brother and sister lie. They lie even at the risk of me losing my only son. I lie, too, for the Saved are not perfect.

So the Lord shows me the answer: My family returns to the Family, the Body of Christ, our beautiful church, I pray. My father’s charity is recognized and amplified. My mother’s love of children is spread among many. My sister’s talents go into teaching. My brother’s compassion bears our burdens. Please notice that this cannot be spoken, but it can be read. We understand by Scripture and Scripture alone.

Thus we are told this is how we should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

In prayer, I ask Him. What does it mean to call myself a Christian Apologist? He answers and says, “that is a man who defends my Book against intruders, the instruction manual my Father and I left behind, the Holy Bible. Written by old Prophets and newer Apostles, through our gift to you of the Holy Spirit, prophesying and then describing to you the Son of God and the Son of man, yet one, Jesus Christ.”

And then He says more. ”Drink your wines sparingly, do not over indulge. My rainbow is the promise to you that you shall not perish again. You know not the hour nor the day, but I will be returning soon. I am the alpha and the omega, and you do not know. So increase your love for your neighbor and tell more the good news.”

Amen

Heading OFF a (hypothetical) IPO

We, as editors, have done a lot of hard work for this Foundation. As far as I can tell, the decision to make a future deca-billion $ IPO rests in the hands of a few. No matter how likely or unlikely you might think an IPO might be, would you agree that we should at least research the policy an control of a (hypothetical) IPO? I suggest we start with the Articles of Incorporation and the voting rights of the Board. We might also want to look at the IRS consequences for switching from nonprofit to for-profit. With so much pro bono work by we editors, my guess is that the IRS payback is minimal, this favoring a highly profitable IPO for the few. MsTopeka (talk) 11:40, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

How'd they get us to work for nothing and make us pay to read our own work? On the sixth day of the trial, the defense ran out of witnesses. The judge declared that all of the defense testimony on the Bible was irrelevant and should not be presented to the jury (which had been excluded during the defense). One of the defense attorneys, probably Darrow, asked "Where are we to find an expert on the Bible who is acceptable to the court?" Bryan interjected "I am an expert on the Bible." Thus Bryan volunteered to be a defense witness.

The odds of a nonprofit organization like the Wikimedia Foundation having a successful IPO are very, very low, since investors tend to want to invest in profitable companies instead of nonprofits, so they can get a return on their investment. That said, this is hardly the place to discuss this, as en-wikipedia has no authority to make rules regarding the Wikimedia Foundation as a whole. I'm not certain if it would be appropriate on meta, but it's presumably more germane to there than it is to here. Rdfox 76 (talk) 12:04, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

One could also argue that the odds of Global Warming are low, but it would be completely irresponsible to ignore those (percieved) low odds. Anyway, how would either you or I know what the odds are? I've run companies as CEO, and I see a possibility. We are doing most of the work of the foundation for free on .en, so why take it to meta? The Board Elections at meta are lame - it appears they have little power, but yet they might have the entire vote, under corporate bylaws, to go for commercialization. BTW, the profit is in advertising, as usual, and in the control of information as per top ranking of WP for just about any word, phrase, term, etc. by just about all major search engines - if not ALL. So why do you see this information management as not profitable? We have no facts in evidence as of yet. Let's explore, here. MsTopeka (talk) 14:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Apologies should I appear rude or ignorant of your previous comment, MsTopeka, but the chances of the Wikimedia Foundation becoming a for-profit organization in the immediate future are negligible. While it would be irresponsible, perhaps, to ignore something like global warming, I find the issue more akin to maintaining a bomb shelter: there's very little likelihood that it will be useful in the foreseeable future. Such an organizational shift would likely not serve the needs of the organization in terms of fulfilling its goals or maintaining its founding principles. In addition, even the notion of the addition of advertising, to serve the costs of the current nonprofit, is contentious—such a commercially-oriented change would alienate much of the community and likely heavily damage the project. As our board members are aware of the issues I mention, I find this discussion wholly unnecessary, not to mention pointless (as the English Wikipedia has no power to enforce those ideas which would be produced). Should the possibility of commercialization be approached, a discussion will then be appropriate. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 15:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Could I ask you to reference corporate documents that are binding by law - and not by vote - as to what you have said above? Yahoo and Goog are worth ~ $100B, and in complex situations, such as war and business, it is sometimes useful, though not all together final, to use a money motive to find leads that might indicate the truth, without opinion. Obviously, nonprofits can generate profits (e.g., via salaries) just as for-profits can be unprofitable (e.g., a negative P&L). 17:28, 6 September 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by MsTopeka (talk • contribs)

WP:DFTT. Corvus cornix_talk 18:04, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I did click, and it was a reference to a troll. Are trolls usually concerned about the public good if a $50B IPO went through on the work of the many to enrich the few? It's not our opinions that matter, it is facts in evidence. There are other ways to stop an IPO. MsTopeka (talk) 20:11, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

The WMF having an IPO isn't just unlikely, it's impossible. You can't sell shares in a non-profit, it doesn't make sense. Even if they somehow turned WMF from a non-profit to a for-profit (which I don't think is even possible), the shares would be pretty much worthless because the community would immeadiately fork and without the community the WMF doesn't have anything other than a trademark and that trademark would rapidly be associated with some extremely bad PR. --Tango (talk) 20:46, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

There are many methods:

• Exclusive licensing of a nonprofit's Intellectual Property (these pages) to a for-profit company
• Negotiation with IRS and other taxation entities for determining the non-profit's fiancial basis with subsequent conversion to a for-profit corporation
• Mergers, Acquisitions, etc.

Look at the major nonprofit universities in the USA (and elsewhere): They license research (perhaps sponsored by the government) to for-profit companies for profit. In the case of government sponsored research, the US government reserves "walk-in" rights, rarely used. In the case of WP, the fiancial basis might be evaluated very low, because our editors are not paid salaries and the facilities are largely our home computers. That might cause a very large and prohibitive tax, such that we will not see an IPO. One needs to look to financial methods for derailing an IPO, not altruistic ones. Your good morals and intentions are worth little on Wall Street, and I am as unhappy about that as you are. MsTopeka (talk) 21:04, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

What intellectual property? The Foundation owns the copyright over the logo, and a few trademarks. All content is copyrighted by the contributor and GFDL-released. Algebraist 21:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

... ... ... Not everyone in this world is motivated by profit. As much as it may shock you, some of us may actually LIKE the idea of a freely editable encyclopedia untainted by greedy corporations and not filled with poorly coded and ugly advertisements. We're fine the way that we are; I don't see what we'd gain by having any more money than we need to cover foundation and server costs, so I don't really see the point. I'd rather have what we have now (re: no corporate interests, relatively little corruption, cross-browser compatibility, etc) than have to leave because of a hostile editing environment controlled by corporate interest.

But, no. The only intellectual property owned by the Foundation is the logos and the trademarks at our various member projects. Keeping it the way it is now (where we own the content, not the foundation) is precisely for that reason; so it can't be taken from us by people like you.  :) Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 21:54, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I trust that you are correct about there being no IP associated with the Foundation. You've misread me in saying "so it can't be taken from us by people like you." I've done nothing but pro bono work for the last six years. In fact, it is dangerous for me to comment on the "derailing topic", because these ideas might be inverted or used to find a path to an IPO. You and I don't want that, and we have worked hard for free. We might argue in edits, but that's fine. Let's not argue about keeping this thing nonprofit. My point, from years as an MIT prof, Silicon Valley CEO, and now a Christian Apologist, is that someone might have a money motive and we need to derail any attempt at profiting from the work of free editors with free speech - tempered by our co-editors abilities to neutralize any single edit by any of us. So, you have a good point if there is no IP. All the Foundation has is the free efforts of we editors, and we will jump ship if it looks like the Foundation is turning towards profit. The problem is that the encyclopedia might be largely done in a few years, and they won't need any editors except for future events. Those future editors could be paid, and they might do a good job at cleaning up our giant messes on wedge issues by simple deletion of articles and tons of discussion pages and archived edit wars. Unlike Goog and Yahoo, we have an enormous human effort with editorial review. To a zeroth order approximation, Goog and Yahoo are computers and algorithms, and WP is a world-wide collection of human brains. I argue that WP is then worth an order-of-magnitude more that Goog, perhaps as much as $1,000B. So, watch out folks. MsTopeka (talk) 23:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I was being sarcastic when I meant "people like you". Still, as I say below, even if that does happen, we can simply start another nonprofit, fork the content, and start editing there, while Wikipedia dies a slow death from the lack of volunteer editors. I don't really see what the point of becoming Brittanica Online would be; they've already pretty much got the "paid encyclopedia editors" thing pretty down. Of course, I'm just an internet law student, not an economist, so maybe there's a value for Wikipedia to copy that, I don't know. It just doesn't seem viable to me. In any case, we'll simply go elsewhere if something like that happens. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 23:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I've been thinking this myself (about a possible IPO). Jimbo never ruled out ads on Wikipedia, and ads would make Wikipedia very profitable, one can figure. I'm pretty sure in a few years Jimbo and the board (who do not answer to us, as said above) will unilaterally decide to allow advertising on Wikipedia, followed by an IPO a few months from there. The OP (original poster) is right -- her idea does not sound all that far-fetched. Halli B (talk) 23:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

The board and our benevolent dictator have better things to do than deal with trolls; we have an Arbitration Committee that's out of control, a wheelwar at Sarah Palin, and RFCs up the wazoo. I'm glad that they haven't posted here, because that would mean they would be remiss in their actual duties.

That aside, even if they did that, it wouldn't be too much of a problem. All we would have to do would be to start another non-profit fork the content from here and all start editing there. The Foundation doesn't own what we write, so this isn't really a problem. We'd just be starting over with new faces. In the meantime, the ad-ridden Wikipedia, lost of its editors who no longer want to contribute to a corporate-controlled, ad-ridden piece of crap, would quietly die as no one edited anymore, while wherever else we went would just take its place. Again, really, not a problem, although I think its extremely unlikely. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 23:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Excellent news. Where's my slice? NVO (talk) 23:42, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

Right here: I have $1B to invest. I pick 1,000 editors who get $1M each. We copy, delete trademarks, and clean up. By consensus, junk is deleted. And guess what? Goog already made the deal with WP, and we are not top-listed on Goog searches. MsTopeka (talk) 23:58, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

topeka, I dont understand your last post. Most of us are not financial professionals, so could you put that in layman's terms? Thankx. Halli B (talk) 01:07, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

(That might be a good idea before Raoul throws the switch.) Most of you probably know that:

• Goog has tried several times to buy Yahoo
• Searching any key word or phrase on any engine puts WP on top or within a few from the top.
• AdWords on Google are no less than ~$0.40 and can go up to $275 per click through, the later was "Digital Imaging" to an MS ad.

So, instead of having $1B to invest, I need $5B so that I can at least keep a door open to our edited-for-money clone of this no-IP WP thing we are all writing in for free. That door would be Yahoo. The paid editors of the clone, en.youvansomething.com get $1B, and Yahoo gets $4B.

Marketing angle -> Several flavors of youvansomething, selected by a massive bank of computers with a front end that looks a lot like a dating service. LOL is OK, I'm not a financial guy, but if I thought of this little cute story, so imagine what the big money guys are thinking. They have all met recently:

In March 2008, Richard Branson hosted an environmental gathering at his private island, Necker Island, in the Caribbean with several prominent entrepreneurs, celebrities, and world leaders. They discussed global warming-related problems facing the world, hoping that this meeting will be a precursor to many more future discussions regarding similar problems. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Larry Page of Google were in attendance. MsTopeka (talk) 01:26, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I still have no idea what you mean with the finance part. What about Five billion dollars and yahoo? Halli B (talk) 01:34, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

It might be better to move on to law: (1887 law Kansas grand jury 5,000 signatures) and just plan to stop it. MsTopeka (talk) 01:46, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

What does Kansas state law have to do with anything on Wikipedia? Halli B (talk) 02:00, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

←I've seen some stupid threads in my time, but this is right up there. – iridescent 02:03, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

You seem to have moved on from an IPO to a project to create a new encyclopaedia with paid writers. I think you'll find that's already been done (long before Wikipedia came along) and we've pretty much driven them all out of business since we have far more writers and they are doing it out of love for the project, not money, so work far harder. You really are making no sense at all... --Tango (talk) 02:39, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think the OP quite grasps the concept that a) the project is far from anything remotely approaching "done", we'd simply fork the project to a new host elsewhere if consensus no longer mattered and we were no longer in control of the project, that the Foundation would probably never do this anyway, and that Kansas law has nothing to do with someone who has a corporate charter in an entirely different state. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 03:22, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Please see two newly inserted images. MsTopeka (talk) 07:21, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree and have revereted the supposedly USA-based copyvio involving the deletion of the Scope's Monkey Trial image on this user page. The image is still in the main Scopes article, and I would like to hear how that is not a USA copyvio if the use of the image here is a copyvio! WP is USA based in Florida and California. I am in Kansas. Is this Jimbo's form of Federalism? I know the law analogous to USPTO and 261g, so what copyright law would you like to cite as specific to this user page and not the Scope's article? Be very careful what you say and do on this page, because we might be seeing Jimbo and Goog in an act of sedition involving the First Amendment of the US Constitution. This will forever change WP, and I pray that is for the better, breaking these under-the-table deal between Jimbo, the inner circle, and Goog. Fellow editors: You are working for free, and they are making profits on us. We need to re-establish Free Speech, and to link images directly to Commons, as in the past. Banning the Scope's image here was not done by Commons. And, guess what? Even a search of the word "sedition" yields a top link to WP: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sedition&aq=f&oq= to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition. A Goog search of "Scopes Trial" http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=scopes+trial&btnG=Search also leads to WP as the top link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial where you will see the proper caption of the image in dispute, here: "Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan chat in court during the Scopes Trial."

From his locked article, here on WP: "In a 2007 interview, Wales said he had mixed feelings about having "donated" Wikipedia to the foundation, as he estimated its value at US$3 billion, but added that he is glad he did, as this is only the case because of the nature of Wikipedia itself." Please try to unlock his article and reference this user page as further discent with facts on Goog referencing and the above mentioned meeting.

Also, despite your personal view on Evolution, look what this group is doing to Free Speech and school board elections in the state of Kansas. http://www.kcfs.org/ You might not be able to see their page or edit at any given time, because that site appears to operate when the friends of Hrafn are able to knock down edits, both on kcfs.org and here on WP. I believe this to be a consortium of editors, so watch their board members (some on Kansas state salaries and equipment) begin to bail out as they get caught doing something other than teaching school. Recall that we are in the same state as Scopes. The friends of kcfs.org have edited here on WP to rewrite the science of Arrhenius, one of the fathers of thermodynamics. His theory of panspermia is now grouped with Intelligent Design and Creation, thus his science is rewritten so as not to give a scientific alternative to either ID or GDI. Solid science, with a mathematical basis is banned, over a secular / religious argument. Panspermia is well covered on [www.panspermia.com]. There are other problems with these guys perverting science: See the third figure down in our Genetic Code article and follow the links through Commons if they haven't been expunged yet. Somehow, somewhere, these "biologists" were given the ability to evade hard physics and chemistry to advance arguments in biology that have no basis in in more basic science. From other entries here, you will see that it was (my) work at MIT ca. 1990 - 1992 that is referenced as the experimental proof of test tube evolution using a metaphor to the genetic algorithm that was reduced to Recursive Ensemble Mutagenesis [1] and [2]. Based on a fundamental structuring of the genetic code, this method was delayed because Crick was helping Thomas Jukes (my first Ph.D advisor at UC Berkeley) throw Christians out of public schools in California ca. 1970. Crick saw part of the structure of the code and then backed off. Those edits have been expunged here on WP, despite the fact that there is solid referencing.

Do you read the prayer, above, and discount what I have to say as a WP editor just because I believe Genesis 1 is an example of Mathematical Beauty? If you do, and promote that idea into society and public education, then I call you a secular fascist, and that will bring in the pun of Godwin's Law, our WP general counsel.

PseudoInverse of Partitioned Tuples

Is this known to be a trivial solution, and /or is the scaling of the SVD algorithm NP?

(* complete dictionary of words, one per row, number of rows is (alpha^word), using words of length "word" and an alphabet of "alpha" number of characters *) (* "PseudoInverse" is the canonical method of taking the pseudoinverse as per this article and the Mathematica function implemented hereinbelow *)

alpha=4;word=3;dict=.;

dict=Partition[Flatten[Tuples[Reverse[IdentityMatrix[alpha]],word]],(alpha*word)]

PseudoInverse[dict]==((Transpose[dict])*((alpha)^-(word -1)))-((word - 1)/(alpha^word)/word)

True

(* There is nothing special for alpha=4;word=3 - The method works for all cases where word < alpha, but that is a more verbose loop, and the Mathematica PseudoInverse function takes too long to calculate for values of alpha and word that are large, whereas the transpose side of the equation is fast. *)

Doug Youvan (talk) 18:25, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

A Big Change

My blocks on WP are gone. I edit without a name or IP address.

The sedition thing changed everything. Hrafn / Dawkins is gone.

There could be ties between HD and WP and Goog. That is government money used against the People, a clear act of sedition of the 1st Amendment.

We have an election coming up, and things must stay balanced. We have a country to put back on a path.