Topics Top articles New articles Updated articles Top users New users New discussions Top discussions New comments+ New article
Music notation engine. domain-specific language input. The LaTeX of music.
Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism by 
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-06 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-06 +Created 1970-01-01Ciro Santilli is fond of cynicism, see also ciro Santilli's film tastes.
Related quotes:
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy adaptation by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-06 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-06 +Created 1970-01-01
Bill Haydon played by Ian Richardson in the 1979 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (TV series)
. 
Bill Haydon played by Colin Firth in the 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (film)
. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy character by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-06 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-06 +Created 1970-01-01Some key points that are a bit hard to grasp, at least in some versions:
- How did Bill Haydon know Jim Prideaux was going to Prague if it appears to be organized as a closely guarded secret by Control?so which one is it?
- the film suggests Prideaux must have told Haydon himself, his close friend, against Control's orders of secrecy, out of loyalty, and in order to protect his friend.
- The series suggests it was a honeypot
- How does Smiley deduce that the Witchcraft source, Merlin, is Poliakov? A key step is when top people at the Circus question him about Ricki Tarr, and appear to suggest that there is a link between Ricki Tarr and Merlin. And Ricki told Smiley that Poliakov as the link to the Mole. Smiley understands that it was Karla who tipped off London Center about Ricki's coming through Merlin. He also observers that Witchcraft gives ideological infiltration campaign intelligence after Ricki comes back, as a way to discredit Ricki. It is still all a bit indirect.
The Final Encyclopedia (Paul Allen) by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-06 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-06 +Created 1970-01-01The Google Story Chapter 21. A Virtual Library mentions that Paul Allen was interested in trying to create something like the "Final Encyclopedia" from this book. This is somewhat the same motivation for Google Books and Google's activities more broadly, as shown in their organise the world's information mission statement.
Related concepts:
Home University Library of Modern Knowledge by Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-06 +Created 1970-01-01
Ciro Santilli 35 Updated 2025-01-06 +Created 1970-01-01Extremelly ironic that it was bought by Oxford University Press and ceased to be "Home University". University is broken.
Ciro Santilli is old enough to remember his parents whispering its name with a respectful tone.
Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick (1994) mentions several times how Richard Feynman was a reader of the encyclopedia. E.g. in youtu.be/ivxkd98mDvc?t=50 Richard's sister also talks about it.
Then the Internet came along and killed it.
The motivation model for collaborators was simple: to get famous. To be able to be selected contribute an article meant that you knew something or two! There was some physicist Ciro read the biography of who was really glad to be able to write an article on the encyclopedia after having worshiped it for so long, TODO find the reference.
While this is somewhat a part of Wikipedia motivation, it is much less so because there is no single article authorship. This is something OurBigBook.com aims to improve.
Also way too idealistic :Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism.
Also the good/evil is way too black and white.
If only everything was instead funny and charming and intelligent like the very first part in the Shire... that section and others interspersed withing the running are good film level.
Pinned article: ourbigbook/introduction-to-the-ourbigbook-project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 2. You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either OurBigBook.com or as a static website.
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally. Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. - Internal cross file references done right:
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
Figure 6. Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents.Live URL: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordateDescendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact