magic school bus

Today's xkcd comic is hilarious (and full of color!):

My first thought: when I was kid, it was Encarta! (you get to read a similar statement if you hover your mouse on the comic in their webpage, so I assume the cartoonist and I are from the same generation.) It was the great beginning of the so dangerous copy-paste technique.

I could diverge to many topics from here, like truly, who buys encyclopedias nowadays? Is this also one of the reasons why they are cutting the budget of the NYPL system? It's truly a pity, but I can see why this occurs in a city as money-driven as this is :(. I hope the branch that I go to (Morningside Heights) doesn't close as long as I live here.

I will stick to the Wikipedia topic today. It's amazing how an open source webpage became the main point of supply of knowledge for everybody. It is also a topic of several PhD theses how and why people contribute to the articles. I was utterly amused last week when I read that Sarah Palin's supporters had modified Paul Revere's Wikipedia page to match it to whatever she said on a TV interview (see news here). I mean, how crazy is that?

Which brings me to the next and last question: Have you ever even tried editing an article of wikipedia? I know I haven't, and I was surprised when a good friend of mine here at school did it when he spotted a mistake. However, I am proud to say that I did donate 10USD to the webpage. What are the true inner motives of people to act this way? I wonder.