[Novalug] OT - Wikipedia and the art of censorship

[Ross Patterson]

At 19:26 8/19/2007, Dan Arico wrote:
>Now imagine Wikipedia with DRM. Whoever controls the DRM gets to rewrite
>history as he pleases.

That's the traditional encyclopedia, of course.  But there's no 
monopoly on the writing of encyclopedias, and there are differences 
of opinion between them.

>There's one open source project that is desperately needed because of
>this problem - open source text books.

Why?  Other than a $0.00 price tag, what does an open source textbook 
give us that we don't already have?  There are lots of alternative 
perspectives in print about history, the soft sciences, and even the 
hard sciences.  Heck, even mathematics!  And don't get me started on 
the liberal arts - *nobody* can agree on what to say in those areas.

Ross