The Getz Files

If you click on any of my links, you may find I use Wikipedia a lot. I think it's a superb site in practice, and I like it in principle: the idea that lots of people together can come up with the best set of information. Of course, it isn't perfect, and this article from the NYT writes about an instance of a problem - and now they've tightened their rules. That doesn't deter me from using it for most purposes: as the article says, "The best defense of the Wikipedia, frankly, is to point out how much bad information is available from supposedly reliable sources." Slate, as ever, has a very good article on it.

The NYT article brings me to another brilliant site: bugmenot.com. For any site that requires registration, you can just go to bugmenot, enter the URL and voila, you have a username and password without having to go through all that registration rigmarole. There's nothing illegal or immoral about it: it won't give you free access to sites you have to pay for.