Comments for notabilia.us

Comment on MediaWiki and Genealogy by Jenny

Jenny — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:01:08 +0000

I’m in exactly the same position as many of you, wanting to collaborate with my relatives using a wiki. I too want to initiate it from several Gedcom files, export to Gedcom and have a nice tree structure where needed.
Oh, and password protected as not everyone wants their lives exposed on the internet.
If I can’t find anything suitable soon I might be up for a collaboration if you’re interested?
Check out my webpage for contact details.

Comment on MediaWiki and Genealogy by Scott

Scott — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:34:32 +0000

I have been using Media wiki for genealogy for about a year now and I like it a lot. I’m using it pretty much as-is without any plugins. I basically use it as a password protected place (so I can’t really show you an example) to keep notes about individuals. I am putting together a photobook of my great grandfather’s family (some pretty old photos) and my media wiki comes in handy when I need to remember something. I use myheritage for reading and writing my gedcom file. I don’t pay for it and it still has some good features. I especially like the graphical family tree interface, its the best I’ve seen. It also lets you backup your gedcom file, so I upload my backups to my own server and link to them from my wiki. The wiki can’t read them or anything, but I can see the files and download them if I need a backup.

Comment on Piracy by Seth

Seth — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:09:26 +0000

Europe has option four for television and it works, for the most part. However, you do end up with invasive and wasteful intrusions by the government into people’s private lives. Television licensing there means that the government can intrude into your life if you buy a television which you do not intend to use for over-the-air signals.

My guest mother in Germany volunteered for the local church, which purchased a TV set to play videos as part of a day care program. As such, they had no reason to pay the license fee. Rather than accept this explanation, the government sent in an inspector to see if the TV set could receive signals, and then a mechanic to remove its receiver.

We’ll end up with similarly poor allocations of resources and unwanted intrusions if we set up a government licensing scheme for all artistic content.

Comment on Kurzweil’s Sixth Epoch: Waking Up the Universe by Paul

Paul — Mon, 16 May 2011 03:54:23 +0000

Well, I find it hard to believe that life and intelligence are that unlikely, but I also find it hard to believe that the technological singularity will never happen, so this is quite a thinker for me! The best explanation I have come up with for why the universe is not already in the 6th epoch is this: After the technological singularity the first goal of the post-singularity super-organism would be to increase its computational power by assimilating its home planet and solar system. Simultaneously, it will run a complete simulation of the universe and compare and contrast it to complete simulations of others universes with varying physical laws. By the time it has finished encompassing its solar system, however, it will have finished countless simulations and will have realized the futility of endlessly computing scenario after scenario and instead will seek to transcend knowledge altogether. You see, life grows exponentially while the resources to sustain that growth exist, but what truly drives exponential growth is appetite, i.e. appetite to consume resources. I imagine that a post-singularity super-organism will have overcome its appetite and will govern itself via intellect instead. Because of this, there is no reason to believe it will expand exponentially out into the universe, but will instead seek to transcend knowledge altogether through intensive “meditation”-not meditation in the western sense of contemplation, but in the eastern sense of achieving “selflessness”. This would truly be the end of biological evolution. I’ll be honest, I like Kurzweil’s idea of the universe waking up more a lot than I like my idea, I just find it very hard to believe that commonplace intelligent life and the singularity are mutually exclusive.

Comment on MediaWiki and Genealogy by Robb

Robb — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 04:39:18 +0000

I too found your site looking for semantic mediawiki and genealogy. I was wondering if there was some module for the display of the tree format and had some ideas I haven’t seen anyone implement yet.

Comment on Kurzweil’s Sixth Epoch: Waking Up the Universe by Kevin Tran

Kevin Tran — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 05:01:06 +0000

maybe after the singularity of Ray Kurzweil, we all stay home and play video games )

Comment on MediaWiki and Genealogy by Michael

Michael — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:00:38 +0000

If you want to use MediaWiki for genealogy, go with http://semantic-mediawiki.org. In combination with the Semantic Forms extension, you could make a nice genealogy site.

Comment on MediaWiki and Genealogy by Albert

Albert — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:35:57 +0000

Same remark as Todd. Am considering using a Mediawiki for a collaborative family tree. I see you seem to have stayed with phpgedview. Have you tried moving it to a Mediawiki? What was your experience?

Comment on Kurzweil’s Sixth Epoch: Waking Up the Universe by Nova

Nova — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:10:39 +0000

For all we know there could be so many other reasons that are far beyond our human comprehension. Maybe a civilisation that has already reached the sixth epoch is purposely avoiding engulfing us for whatever reason. There is now way to tell what will happen when a civilisation reaches that stage.

Comment on How to Rapidly Add Twitter Followers by How to get hundreds of twitters followers for free and follow them back automatically | Accumulator of desired abundance

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 05:01:21 +0000

[...] How to Rapidly Add Twitter Followers [...]

Comment on Kurzweil’s Sixth Epoch: Waking Up the Universe by Yorick

Yorick — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:33:41 +0000

One other possibility:

o The Singularity cannot be reached

We do not understand how consciousness works. It’d be rash to state that we will understand it by such-and-such a date, or that we will positively be able to create it through technology, or that such technologically created people (conscious entities, whatever you wish to call them) will outstrip human intelligence exponentially.

There are just too many unknowns. Maybe machines really cannot become conscious. Maybe if they can become conscious, it turns out that being able to find prime numbers really fast and being able to increase one’s intelligence are two very, very different things. Maybe machines that become conscious just want to watch (virtual) reality TV, and that’s why the Singularity never occurs.

Maybe we’ll find out eventually. That’d be fun. In the meantime, keep making those robots!

Comment on E-Textbooks on the Horizon? by Ronald

Ronald — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:14:47 +0000

If you are lucky enough to be a genealogist, you are lucky enough.

Comment on Is Facebook Bad? by Jess

Jess — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:59:04 +0000

This is a very interesting article. Facebook is not true interaction and can be overly used by people who show signs of social anxiety.
I recently broke up from a 5 year relationship, so I have lost contact with a large group of mutual friends. I also lost alot of my self esteme in the process. I have spent alot of my time on facebook during this time and its been excessive. I have been using as a false sense of security that I have people around when really, the cyber world…is not the REAL world. I felt safe interacting with people from the comfort of my own home when that is not a healthy thing. I always felt so down reading and living vicariously through other ppls social lives…pretty sad hey. But I know im not the only one that has gone through this. I have stepped away and outta my house and now push my self to engage in face to face sociaising. Life has been great.
Its so easy for some to be sucked into this trap. Eeeek. Its scary where the future of our generation is headed. Human connection is important for stability, growth and enjoyment in our lives… you cant get meaningfull connection through a computer screen. I have vowed only to use facebook to communicate with family and friends who live to far away to visit.

Comment on Kurzweil’s Sixth Epoch: Waking Up the Universe by Jack

Jack — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:54:31 +0000

The implications of self-improving AI were explored by Isaac Asimov in the fifties and probably by others even earlier. It doesn’t originate with Kurzweil. Seriously, I can’t understand what people see in this guy.

Comment on YouTube Scrobbler GreaseMonkey Script by Tim

Tim — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:01:40 +0000

I have a problem in that when I say play one track using the YT scrobbler.. my last.fm profile page shows using Youtube Scrobbler.. but when I start
playing music from WMP 11 and the notification should change it is still showing listening using Youtube Scrobbler.. I tried disabling greasemonkey
but after 8 tracks from Windows Media Player 11 I still see listening using Youtube Scrobbler.. is this a bug with last.fm or with the scrobbler itself?

Comment on MediaWiki and Genealogy by Todd

Todd — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:50:59 +0000

I found your website googling this as well. I’d like to maintain my own little mediawiki for my family name and keep it more controlled by only allowing relatives in to collaborate. I wish there was a mediawiki plugin that would import and export GEDCOM data. I get GEDCOM is not that standard as different implementers don’t always comply with the standard. Still, it would be real helpful to have a that and a mediawiki template for people. Let me know if you guys want to attempt to develop it collaboratively.

Comment on MediaWiki and Genealogy by john

john — Sun, 24 May 2009 14:15:36 +0000

Have you made any progress on your decision? I have also been researching this question and have been doing a trial run with Semantic Mediawiki, Forms, templates, etc. I am currently of the opinion that this will be a very good solution, but there are still some things to work out (family trees, for instance – although Semantic Result Formats seems to be a good candidate).

I’d be happy to share more details with you if you are interested.

Regards,

John

Comment on Resolutions by January 2009 Resolution at Richard Mondello

January 2009 Resolution at Richard Mondello — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:35:24 +0000

[...] by my friend Michael White, I’m realizing that I don’t read enough anymore. It bothers me, so I hope to read for [...]

Comment on Is Joe Wurzelbacher Related to Charles Keating? by Christian Quill » Is Joe Wurzelbacher Related to Charles Keating?

Christian Quill » Is Joe Wurzelbacher Related to Charles Keating? — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:31:16 +0000

[...] Read the original post: Is Joe Wurzelbacher Related to Charles Keating? [...]

Comment on A De Facto National Popular Vote in 2008 by Markus Schober

Markus Schober — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:19:32 +0000

DON’T APOLOGIZE (FOR WORK YOU’VE DONE)!

I haven’t gotten too far into it, but it really is quite good.