[TUHS] etymology of cron

[jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)]

    On Dec 22, 2015, at 5:44 PM, Norman Wilson <norman at oclsc.org> wrote:

    > If that's the quality of reference they accept, there is simply no
    > reason to take anything they publish as gospel.

You're mistaking Wikipedia for an information source you can rely on. It's
not. It's more akin to an attempt to prove that an infinite number of
monkeys, with an infinite number of typewriters, and an infinite amount of
time, can produce a reliable encyclopaedia.

(Yes, yes, spare me the surveys that show that Wikipedia's error rates aren't
that bad, when compared with other encyclopaedias, etc.)

Don't get me wrong, Wikipedia is quite useful as a place for an
_introduction_ to any topic, but anyone who really wants to _reliably_ know
anything about a topic needs to look at the references, not the articles.

There was an attempt to do a Wikipedia-like online encyclopaedia that one
could rely on - Citizendium - but alas it doesn't seem to have taken off (or
hadn't when I got distracted from working on it).

And I know whereof I speak; those who wish to be amused may want to read:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jnc/Astronomer_vs_Amateur

And apologies for continuing the off-topic (this group certainly can't fix
Wikipedia, people have been complaining about this problem for many years
now), but some buttons, you just have to respond when they are pushed...

	Noel