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."
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."
Yeah... too bad it's way too late in the production process now to make such a change.
They might have been extradited to Syria for torture.
C:\>
Guys, you're missing the point. Farscape wasn't saved because of an empty list of signatures, although we had one that broke 100k.
Farscape was saved because thousands of fans went out and DID THINGS. Things which required time, effort, and yes, money. Seeing so many invest so much in so many ways finally convinced *someone* out there that bringing back the show was a financially worthy decision.
Actually, I think it helps. Even if it is ignored by the decision makers, they still know that someone went to the trouble of doing this. They must realize that there is an interest there.
Yay, lets all go sign a petition saying that we think a movie would be better when edited a certain way, when we have not seen either of the options, and have no idea which one really is better! Just like my public education taught me, "An uninformed opinion is better than no opinion at all" ;)
Seriously, where is the poll for letting Peter Jackson who is a much better director and producer than I will ever be, make the decision based on his expert opinion.
Why don't they do the voting machines like this?
When a vote is cast, the machine punches holes in a paper card. The paper card is then transferred to a card reader and the vote on the card is read. If the vote read from the paper card matches the vote that was cast, the paper card is transferred to a secure box and the electronic vote is recorded. If the card cannot be read, it is destroyed, and the machine shuts down until someone can service it.
This simple technique creates a paper audit trail, and provides a backup method of tallying votes. Recounts actually become possible.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Problem is, the attention paid by the decision maker is (generally) directly proportional to the product of the number of interested parties and the barrier of effort to them registering as an interested party. Online petitions have such a trivial barrier of effort and lack of actual strict controls on who gets involved ( i.e. customers? Random discontents? The same person 15,000 times? ) that I would be very unlikely to pay them any mind if a printout of one landed on my doorstop. Things like the Two Towers / Sep 11 petition did little to improve my view of the service.
I suspect I'm not alone in this view. I haven't looked at PO's page in a while - do they actually deliver the completed petition to the parties involved? The whole thing seems like a big scam to gather in paypal donations to me.
There are some markets ( internet technical / computer services / etc ) where these petitions might do better due to cultural bias and demographic within these industries. I don't think Big Film is one of these.
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Got my versions a little mixed up there (oh, my, this has been a bad day), but it doesn't really change things. Jackson has already explained why he cut Saruman, in detail. It makes sense. He probably didn't like it, but the movie is still 3h21m or whatever -- and he probably had to fight to get to go over 3h to begin with.
I think it sucks, but I also don't think there's even a remote possibility of this changing. Jackson is done with the movie. I imagine the reels are already done or close to it.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Ummm... Did you actually watch the last season of Northern Exposure? That series definately went on at least one season too long. I present this as evidence in support.
Compare with this.
Not every submission needs a pithy comment or lame headline.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I'm afraid this will likely offend some of the hardcore LOTR fans, and they probably have mod points. But I have to put this as clearly and bluntly as possible: Peter Jackson is a better fucking director than you are. You'll get your 7 minutes on the DVD. The theatrical release will already be long. PJ has seen the footage, and you have not. For all of these reasons, leave him alone.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
The administration quickly dumped him and the project as a result.
The administration dumped the propject because too many of thier own people were describing this as a "Terrorism Futures Market".
They dumped Poindexter because it turned out that some of the public actually remembered who that assfuck really is.
Now if the general public would realize that the only people who would hire people like Poindexter (convicted of fraud and conspiracy against the federal government in an act of supporting terrorism) and Rummsfeld (convicted of conspiracy against the federal etc) are cut from the same cloth, then perhaps we wouldn't have Bush in the White House.
Read, L
When people bet on a non-terrorist event, isn't there still a chance of something tragic happening?
If I sell company X short in the stock market, isn't there a good chance that, if I make money, it correlates with a bunch of company X's employees being out of a job?
If I invest in an insurance company, aren't I 'betting' that the actuarial tables will be right often enough for me to make money? Hey, that sounds like I'm making my money from human misery. If your wife dies, and she's insured with company Y, then (theoretically) I have incentive to hope it was suicide, so her policy doesn't pay off. Surely it adds to your suffering if a representitive from that company checks on the cause of death, and you may find even the hint of it offensive. Why does society allow such a thing? (Retorical question - In some cases, it catches the "bereved" who slipped arsenic in her tea and is crying crocodyle tears, and that alone is a powerful incentive to allow it, just like we allow police or DAs to do some things we normally find offensive, like shouting, asking leading questions, or deliberately misquoting testimony in an attempt to catch a witness off balance, in the hopes of catching more criminals.)
The point is, I'm not causing that misery. My actions correlate with that misery, but correlation does not imply causation. Why is it OK for me to trade in normal futures or insurance, but not in this? I understand that you are offended by A but apparently not B, what I'm not seeing here is what makes A and B unequal, by your description. Or are you equally offended by people selling stocks short, or betting that a drought will push up the price of corn this fall.
In your example, one problem is apparent. If I fould out my recently kidnapped child had been the subject of a betting pool, I would have a strong suspicion that among you and that "couple of guys". someone had possibly done more than bet, but had acted to influence the odds of winning. However disgusting or horrifying I might find the bet, I'm pretty certain I would find the existence of a causative link a lot more disgusting and horrifying.
If it happened to me, my emotions would probably equate the two, but if it happened to someone else and I had to do jury duty should I listen to those emotions or to reason? I could sentence a kidnapper to death for the death of the victim. I don't think I could give two mooks who were betting on whether the victim would be found alive, in the hearing of the parents, a death sentence, no matter how stupid and insensitive they were. Yes I think what they were doing was wrong, but if I thought phrases like "most horrifying" and "absolutely disgusting" applied, then I could support most severe or absolutely maximum penalties.
I honestly deplore the idea of a speculative market ala John Poindexter's plan. I think it would be a bad thing. But your arguement isn't making the issues any clearer.
Who is John Cabal?
First of all: they present a dichotomy between commercial and open source software. Commercial as opposed to open source. This is plain wrong. JBoss is commercial and open source. RedHat too. SuSE, Mandrake, God, should I keep listing ? They meant to say proprietary vs. open source. The problem is, thy are implying that open source cannot be commercial, and this is a dangerous misunderstanding.
Second error: they imply that proprietary software usually offers better support (though some times it is the other way around). They definetly don't understand the open software model, but they should get informed before writting an official letter. In the open software model, support, customization and services is pretty much all you can sell. And that's where you put your effort.
Finally, an academic institution should prefer, if at all possible, an open source / free software solution rather than a proprietary solution. Why ? Because it is built with an open, peer reviewed method, which is really what the academia is all about. They choose, instead, the classical use the best tool for the job motto, that seems to more appropriate for a commercial company than for a University.
As I said, pretty weak clarification IMHO ...
I'm guessing that either way we're not going to get the Scouring of the Shire
NO. NO WE'RE NOT.
DOES THIS HAVE TO BE REITERATED EVERY TIME SOMETHING COMES UP ABOUT ROTK?
I mean, seriously, people. We've been told that the Scouring isn't going to be in the movie for...oh, three years now. Three years is a long time. Long enough for people to find out that the Scouring isn't in the movie, at least.
Or you'd think they'd figure it out by now.