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Open Source TV
Lish writes "Everyone's favorite tech prognosticator, Robert X Cringely, is going to do a TV show called 'NerdsTV.' It will be available on the web and playable on pretty much any system. The cool part is, they will provide three video versions: one geared at techies, one for suits, and one with all the raw footage so you can edit your own version to your heart's content. There will also be audio-only versions in Ogg and Mp3. All of this is freely redistributable."
I enjoyed the show a great deal and I'm willing to ignore the shameless promotion filler at the top of Cringley's article, but... is this something that has much educational value for our schools? There hasn't been enough time past to make it valuable for a history class and the technological info in the series is surely way to low to be of any value.
Moreover, I doubt that the pictures of geeks making millions will be enough to stop the school bullies from beating the snot our of nerds. In fact it may make it worse!
Or would some else do better, such as the GNU Free Documentation License FDL be better? Or something completely different and maybe new? I just have the feeling that GPL is tailored for software in a way that makes it incomplete or even invalid for licensing a TV show.
Does someone have more insightful input than my "feelings" ;)
Here are the original articles which have some more information about the new show.
1. Is the World Ready for a Cringely Open Source TV Show?
2. Downloadable Video Cringely is on His Way
Luckily this is the U.S. version, which lacks my big nude scene from the UK version. I am not making this up.
Cringely, I'll be buying the "Special Edition" of your DVD when it comes out in another year.
Do NOT disappoint me.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
There are only a handful of discussion shows that seem to have any kind of legs:
POLITICAL: Question Time, CNN, loads of this
SPORTS: Mainly on radio, whole stations dedicated to this ad infinitum
ARTS: That film rocked, no iot sucked and it was anti women, shut up germaine!
POOOOR MEEEE: Oprah style 'Im fat', 'I hate my wife', 'no one likes me' reassurance stuff - staggering amounts of this
IM GREAT: Oprah style 'your writing moves me so much I want to die every time I read a word of it' style stuff.
Geek chat is unlikely to get any decent airtime, and in fact is unlikely to be of any interest. Those who are into this stuff will probably be at least as knowledgable as the folk on the program, and have access to others to have these conversations in any case.
Oprah fans are all sitting at home alone with the baby rocking gently thinking 'I used to love my life'.
I've said this before, but I'll say it again [a little extra karma never hurt anyone] -- we need a Cringely topic icon.
Why, you ask?
Basically, some of the best discussions come from the Slashdot community after we collectively read a piece from Cringely. His ideas are often fairly original and interesting, which makes for a nice "vacation" from the usual OS Wars, Text Editor Wars, and Software Licensing Wars.
I'd even be happy to make the icon for the Cringely topic.
So, editors, care to give a little feedback on this? There are several other topic areas that we could certainly do without, but I feel that a Cringely area of the site would be well worth it.
Thanks for listening.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Well as any mass media theorist will tell you, any news/information/education program has an inherent bias. Doesn't matter what the producer says, some sort of bias creeps in when they have to make decisions just related to keeping to the alloted time for the program. So by giving you the uncut material, they eliminate some of the bias. There will still be bias remaining from the fact that the producers had limited resources in gathering the original material.
The opinions expressed above are those off one side of my brain, the other side and my employer may not agree.
I think the "open source" part comes from the fact that he's releasing all of the unedited footage that was shot for each show. So anyone can cut their own version and redistribute it.
Not sure how useful that's going to be, but it's a neat idea.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
...raw footage is not made available, but much of the material not used in a particular show is put on their web site.
For instance: If a number of experts were interviewed for a show, with excerpts from those interviews included in the actual broadcast, the web site not only includes transcripts of the broadcast but also transcripts of the complete interviews. This is very useful if you're wondering if the excerpts were taken out of context.
I think it's the future of broadcast-related web sites: all the info from the show...and more.
I have my doubts about the usefulness of the Cringely experiment, but it is interesting. At the very least.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
...of why you shouldn't use /. for legal advice.
Almost everything in this post is factually wrong.
I am not aware of any sense in which PBS is legally owned by the public. I'm not sure what "inherent" ownership means. But it is not a concept which would likely get you far in a court of law.
I believe the ownership structure of PBS is as follows: PBS is a nonprofit corporation owned by all of the local PBS stations, which are usually nonprofit corporations themselves. Most of these local stations were originally associated with colleges or universities, some of which may still maintain some ownership of the local station. Also part of the picture is CPB, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I think CPB is responsible for the distribution of federal funds to PBS and NPR. I don't know if there is any sense in which it owns or is owned by PBS. It is also a nonprofit.
The absurdity of this statement is demonstrated (partially) by translating it to the private sector: "I own shares of GE stock, so any copyrights NBC holds, I hold."
But it also inaccurate to imply that PBS "holds" a large number of copyrights. Unlike the three major private networks, PBS does not originate most of its programming (if any, at all). Most PBS programming originates with local PBS stations. The network exists primarily to distribute those local programs of national interest to other PBS stations.
Nor does this imply, necessarily, that the local station which originates a particular show owns the copyright, either. Usually these shows are produced by independent contractors which own the copyrights. I believe PBS guarantees to its members that most of the shows which go out on their network feed can be broadcast by the local stations for up to five years after the original time it went out on the feed.
There are probably exceptions to this: If you watch The Wall Street Journal Report on your local ABC or NBC or CBS or Fox affiliate, that station may have picked it up from the PBS network feed. The Wall Street Journal Report is an independent production (now owned by CNBC) which may rent time on the PBS feed late at night on the weekends. Your local network affiliate can purchase the rights to broadcast it on Sunday. If they do so they may get the broadcast by pointing one of their satellite dishes at the PBS bird and recording the half-hour program for broadcast on Sunday.
The contracts under which local PBS stations acquire the rights to broadcast (and offer the show for network broadcast) are usually patterned on book publishing contracts. This means the creator maintains ownership of the copyright and that all rights revert to the creator at some point. In book publishing, this is when the book is out of print. For PBS it's usually five years.
NOVA is an excellent example of the ownership pattern described above. WGBH distributes the show and is often listed as the producer. But, if you look carefully at the credits, they often list a separate company as the producer of an individual episode.
PBS Home Video has the rights to sell the videos of NOVA, but they do so only for three years after the original broadcast. Of course, anyone who buys such a video copy has the fair-use right to resell it, but not to reproduce it and resell the reproductions. AFAIK, it is not legal to sell tapes of NOVA you have recorded off the air on the Internet.
Of course, all warnings about using /. for legal opinions apply to this post as well.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.