Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Princeton, Terror, Farscape
"Frankly, sometimes the guy just ... says things." An anonymous reader writes "In a recent Slashdot article, it was reported that Howard Strauss, manager of technology and outreach at Princeton University, wrote a paper bashing the open source community. Princeton has now publicly denounced this article and stated its official policy towards open source."
(I don't know that it's fair to call Princeton's response a denunciation, but the school makes clear that a) Strauss was speaking on his own, not on behalf of the university and b) that Princeton uses, likes, supports, and develops plenty of open source software.)
Oh, they're only votes! tklancer writes "Remember the voting machine failures earlier this month? Well, now Fairfax County is going to investigate the failures in (hopefully) a bit more depth. Now if they'd only start talking about adding a paper trail ..."
Lik-Sang and Microsoft, back on merely uneasy terms. D4rkUnderlord writes "For those who forgot, Lik-Sang was taken down last year by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for selling "Modification devices" (see CNN.com December 16, 2002). Lee sent us this article coming from a HK newspaper: [QUOTE] Have Found this tuesday in the South China Morning Post. Microsoft always get what it want Lee [/QUOTE] Read it here (scan of newspaper article). Note that lik-sang.com has been sold and put under new management last year, so nothing of these trials can or will affect lik-sang.com"
I wish people'd been this worked up about Northern Exposure. calethix writes "There's a news post over at Save Farscape regarding the return of Farscape as a 4 hour mini-series. There aren't a lot of details yet but it's supposed to air next year and has been confirmed by a solid source."
Much as I loathe and mock online petitions ... Hey, if it worked for Farscape, a television show with Alf at the wheel ... Dagrush writes "As you know, there was a slashdot story about how Saruman wa being cut from LotR:RotK. Now there is a petition to put the 7 minutes of Saruman back in the film. You can go here to add your name to the petition, as well as you comments. There are over 17000 signatures right now."
Follow the money, just don't say "terror." Best ID Ever! writes "CNN is reporting that the Policy Analysis Market is set to return, albeit without futures on 'violent events,' and without DARPA or other government involvement. As you may remember, the former DARPA project, under retired admiral John Poindexter's office, was shut down after being roundly condemned by politicians on both sides, leading to Poindexter's resignation. There seems to be a lot of interest in such 'information markets' lately, from the recently announced MIT Market to the long running Iowa Electronic Markets."
Next time they get tied to dingos. An anonymous reader writes "Australian University students Peter Tran, Charles Kok Hau Ng, and Tommy Le avoided jail when they were sentenced today. Charged with Internet piracy for running a file trade site the three copped a plea to reduced charges. Tran gets an 18-month suspended sentence and a $5,000 (Australian) fine. Ng got an 18-month suspended sentence and 200 hours community service. Le was only given community service. Needless to say the Australian record industry is complaining the three should do time, which could have meant five years behind bars. The judge ruled prison was not called for."
No it isn't.
a) The footage is already complete and edited, as they were likely going to use it for the DVD
b) I worked in a movie theatre about 5-6 years back as a kid, movies would be updates in several cases AFTER it has already opened. We would recieve a new reel with additional/removed footage to replace the original reel with.
the guy is blocking slashdot referrers. turn off referrer links or copy it into a new browser window.
Does anybody know if that's a real quote related to this situation? (I didn't find it in Princeton's statement about OSS, is there another link?
I, for one, wrote the author of the syllabus article an email stating that while I'm sure he doesn't represent Princeton and he's not a professor, it must be embarrasing for students at Princeton to be associated with a guy who publicly states that "modifying source code is extremely dangerous and very few people do it anyway." I didn't make a single argument about the merits of open source software - only that the guy should be ashamed of himself for being such a douche while leaning on his position at Princeton for credentials.
I would think that the fall freshman CS class would be better qualified to write an article than Howard Strauss based on the completely erroneous comments he gave in his editorial. I'm glad that Princeton is reacting to this guy running his mouth but I hope it's not too distracting to the CS students there.
And before you reply and blast me - yeah, I know he's not a professor, I know he's not speaking for the school. If the department manager from your medical school got on CNN.com and told the world that it's extremely dangerous to use vaccines and nobody does it anyway, you'd be embarassed nonetheless.
I'm sure that students at Princeton wish their school were on Slashdot for something more newsworthy, such as the 3rd fastest supercomputer.
It's a completely different case. The three people who got charged were apparently involved in blatent copyright violation, ie offering and hosting other peoples copyrighted music for download.
The mp3s4free.net case involves linking, not hosting and targets a completely different set of people.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
And besides that, he has stated it is most definately going in the Expanded Edition.
So this is really a whole hell of a lot of adieu about nothing.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
and they worked fine.
The election lady got all patronizing with me, like I didn't understand how to use a touch screen. I was done voting before I could tell her to shut the hell up.
I was kind of annoyed by the lack of curtains though.
(well, it's no so bad since the LCDs are difficult to read from the side, and the ballots are randomly generated so you can't tell who others are voting for by "finger location")
And even if the "x" disappeared, the user gets a chance to review the votes that will be cast near the end of the session, and the front and back arrows allow you to revisit and modify your choices for each race.
Just fix it! What's the chance it'll disappear again? (Sounds like a UI bug... only happens periodically according to election officials).
I hope by next year they update the firmware or something. Erratic behavior during something as constrained as a poll is unacceptable. JUST USE A FUCKING WEB BROWSER AND CSS IF YOU CAN'T DESIGN A GUI.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Litigious bastards
No one linked to the Strauss story said this; I wrote that headline in the mode of a baffled friend of coworker of his explaining this seemingly random vitriol, seeming ignorance of the Princeton computer community, etc. Sorta like "... it's always the quiet ones, isn't it?"
Sorry for any confusion.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I research in the CS department at Princeton, and am a member of many open-source development projects. So before somebody attacks the entire school, just know that most people GPL their work.
In the vast majority of cases, online petitions don't do a dickie-bird. But there are some cases where, if there are enough people who are signing the petition and taking other action as well, sometimes you can get through to the powers that be.
Case in point: Disney's original plan to release Princess Mononoke with no Japanese audio track only lasted about as long as it took for the fans to mobilize and produce a flood of petitions, emails, letters, and so on to David Jessen, the VP overseeing the project. Before you could say "tatarigama," the DVD release date was magically dropped back four months, and the Japanese soundtrack was added at such an 11th hour that the only indication on the packaging that the original Japanese language track was included was a sticker on the cellophane wrap.
And then there was the DVD of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Warner hadn't wanted to go to the trouble of producing a widescreen edition, reasoning that Charlie was a kiddie movie, and full-frame is more kiddie-movie-friendly. All the nostalgic movie buffs who wanted it in widescreen mobilized, and before you could say "Vermicious Knid," a widescreen edition was subsequently rushed out.
The thing is, in both those cases--and in the case of Farscape--the Internet activists didn't stop at online petitions. They made phone calls, they wrote letters (actual physical letters, not just email, though they sent email too), they collared executives at conventions, they did whatever else they could for publicity. An online petition is easy to ignore. Letters and phone calls are not so easy. And I don't know that I'd be so quick to call the Farscape campaign an unmitigated success, either--the goal of the 'scapers has always been for a whole new season, not just a 4-hour miniseries.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
No, Linux is an unsupported OS here on student PCs. That being said, I use it on my laptop without issues. There's a cluster on Linux PCs in the engineering building, ironically "donated by Microsoft Research"; but those are administered by the CS dept and not OIT.
"Most people I talked to thought it was an actual market for betting on terrorism."
Let's see, people are staking on the uncertain outcome of future events, (betting) such as assassinations, coups, and bombings (terrorism). You know... that sounds a bit like betting on terrorism.
"a tool to try and predict the ever elusive human threats"
Ahh, yes, like a crystal ball for the masses! Listen, would you be at all offended if me and a couple guys 'set up a futures market' (bet) for "elusive human threats" to your family? You know, things like your kids being kidnapped, your wife getting murdered, your mother having a heart attack? Or more to the point, would you be offended if I collected my ten grand because some mugger killed your wife for $20 and jewelry?
When you bet (and that's exactly what it is) on things like bombings, you're betting on peoples' wives, sons, daughters, mothers, and friends dying horrible, senseless deaths. When you bet on a coup happening in, say, Jordan, you're betting on whether the freedom of millions of Jordanians disappears forever. There's a reason the program was dropped - the essence of what makes a human being a human being could'nt allow such repugnancy at the hands of elected and publicly-funded government. It's absolutely disgusting in the most horrifying sense of the word.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."