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New search engine to search inside Wikipedia| This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. |
Thursday, January 18, 2007
A new search engine that was announced yesterday finds articles and links within the English Wikipedia. Wikiseek, run by a California based startup company called “searchme”, is a website which aims to be “A better way to search Wikipedia.”
Although most keywords work without problems, Digg users have found search terms that the site does not recognize. If you enter “Chicago” for example, it shows no Wikipedia articles at all, and clicking “Chicago, Illinois” leads to an article on West Chicago, Illinois and other related articles to the subject. Similarly, entering “Christmas“, “United States” or “PlayStation 3” only provides links to related articles on Wikipedia, although they are in the top 10 of most viewed articles in the English Wikipedia. Searching “porn” comes up with commercial websites linked from Wikipedia, but not the relevant articles in the free encyclopedia. For most articles however, the relevant Wikipedia article is the first result or among the results.
The site says that “The contents of Wikiseek are restricted to Wikipedia pages and only those sites which are referenced within Wikipedia, making it an authoritative source of information less subject to spam and SEO schemes.” The site also offers a Toolbar plugin and a Firefox extension to add a Wikiseek search button inside of Wikipedia pages.
Danny Sullivan at the Search Engine Land blog found Wikiseek’s results inferior compared to the results from established search engines. SearchMe CEO Randy Adams stressed that Wikiseek is still in a beta phase. He pointed out that they welcome feedback more than the average search engine, which can be posted on their company wiki.
Searchme put a button on their main page, encouraging beta testers to instantly promote the site on Digg. In August 2006, Digg had half a million registered users.
Some media outlets have reported that Wikiseek was created by either the Wikimedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia, or private corporation Wikia, which hosts a collection of wiki communities. Both rumors are untrue, says Angela Beesley, co-founder of Wikia and chair of the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikiseek is an independent project with no affiliation with either Wikia or the Wikimedia Foundation.”
The Wikiseek site says they contribute the majority of its revenue from advertisement to the Wikimedia Foundation’s fundraising effort.
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New York couple keeps Indonesian women as slavesWednesday, May 16, 2007
In Long Island, New York, a millionaire couple has been arrested after keeping two Indonesian women as slaves for at least five years.
According to federal prosecutors, the two women were beaten and tortured by Nassau County couple Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 35, and her husband Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, and were kept from leaving the house unless it was to take out the trash. Both women are legal immigrants who migrated to the United States back in 2002. Since receiving the jobs, both women had their passports taken away from them by the Sabhnanis.
“No one would ever think that human beings were being brought into the United States and held for slave labor, and beaten, and tortured in a beautiful mansion right here in one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods on Long Island,” said Demetri Jones, a prosecutor in the case.
Authorities say that the women had scalding hot water poured on them, were forced to take as many as 30 showers in a three hour period, were made to run up and down flights of stairs, and one of the women was forced to eat “25 extremely hot chilli peppers.” All the “punishments” were in response to not completing work properly. The women also said that they had to hide food from “their captors” because the Sabhnani’s did not feed them enough.
Police were alerted to the situation when they found one of the women walking around the city wearing only a towel and a pair of pants.
Both women were promised by the couple to receive at least USD$100 to USD$200 for their work, but according to prosecutors, the couple paid only USD$100 a month, which was sent to one of the women’s daughters who lives in Indonesia.
The women are only identified as Samirah and Nona.
The couple will face charges of keeping people against their will. They are reported to be running a perfume business from their Long Island home.
Climate change impacts WyomingTuesday, March 18, 2008
Cheek numbing, eye watering winds whip across the plains of the Laramie Basin, Wyoming. The ground is yellow brown with patches of recalcitrant snow. Sheep Mountain is losing its winter coat. All normal affairs for March. The March edition of the Wyoming Basin Outlook Report also reports, based on February accumulations, that Snow Water Equivalent is at 99% of average.
The SWE is a measure of the snow pack that feeds the streams, rivers and reservoirs that Wyoming, Nebraska and other states depend upon for water. Current averages are compared to the average SWE for 1971-2000. In recent years, snow pack in this region has been anything but normal.
The Outlook Reports are issued January to June. Since March 2000, only five of 46 months have been above normal. While many of the winter months have been near normal, June’s snow pack is far below average. Even in 2006, the wettest year of the last eight years, June snow pack was only 37% of the average.
In an e-mail interview with Wikinews, Lee Hackleman, Water Supply Specialist, said
| The snowpack is melting out several weeks earlier than average. The higher temperatures in the spring are responsible for this. There seems to be a significant drop in the amount of runoff that we are able to retain in our reservoirs, a lot of runoff seems to be soaking into the ground. We do not have the June flood events any more. We use to [sic] be cool then hot, not cool warm then hot. | ||
In a phone interview with Wikinews, Myra Wilensky of the National Wildlife Federation in nearby Colorado, also commented on changing snow patterns.
| In the west, nothing is ever clockwork, the patterns shift, a good amount of snowfall in the season and then a quick warm up. We don’t get the prolonged snowpack that we used to have. May have a really wet snow year, then really dry with rain.
Can’t count on getting estimated amount of snow anymore. March and November have historically been our snowiest months, but this year it’s been a fairly dry in March and November. Winter is shorter now. |
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This is part of a general increase in temperature in the region. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cited by the National Wildlife Federation estimates that the temperature will rise almost 7 degrees (F) by 2100.
| This will likely cause most, if not all, of the state’s glaciers to disappear. Wildfires may increase, droughts could get worse and rains–when they do come–will likely come in more severe downpours that may cause more flash flooding. Warmer temperatures also mean less snowpack in the mountains, leading to more winter runoff and reduced summer flows in many Wyoming streams. | ||
The NWF’s main concern is the fate of the wildlife in the region, particularly how the impact of pine bark beetles. Warmer winters have led to mass infestations in Western lodge pole pine forests and The New York Times reports that they are now moving on to white bark pines in Yellowstone particularly impacting grizzly bears there. In turn, the grizzlies are shifting to feeding on Canadian thistle, an invasive species that might be choking out native plants.
Changing weather patterns have also affected large migratory animals.
| This year winter came late. When the heavy snows hit, the mule deer and the elk were spread out, had to be fed. Feeding isn’t newsworthy, happened before like in 1982 but it wasn’t as successful this year because they were so spread out. | ||
Water for people has also become a major issue in the region.
| There is a much greater concern for water rights than there used to be. There is not enough late season water to satisfy everyone all the time. | ||
Kansas has long fought Wyoming over water rights issues. And Montana is currently suing Wyoming, claiming that the Yellowstone River Compact signed in 1950 gives rights to both surface and ground water, while Wyoming disagrees. On February 18, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the lawsuit.
| Wyoming officials say they are adhering to the compact and that the drought has meant less water for both states.
But Montana says Wyoming is storing more water in reservoirs than the compact permits and allowing excessive pumping of groundwater reserves that feed into the two rivers. Those “groundwater” reserves are tapped by some Wyoming farmers to irrigate their fields. Energy companies discharge large volumes of groundwater during production of coal-bed methane, a type of natural gas prevalent in northern Wyoming. |
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Authorities do not see this fight over increasingly limited water resources going away anytime soon.
| Everyone is going to have to learn to get by with less. | ||
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