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."
I like this bit from one of the piracy articles:
"Ironically, the sentencing came on the same day as a survey revealing many music industry professionals are active music pirates and believe current copyright laws are unfair and should be changed.
Of 200 artists, managers and record company staff who anonymously responded to an Australian survey, over three-quarters owned CD burners and almost half used them to illegally burn copies of CDs they had purchased. Of the 45 per cent who download music, 50 per cent never pay for it."
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Well, you can visit savefarscape.com and go into their forums to see all the things that the group has done. But I'll give you a short list from memory, some of which I chipped in to pay for (and many others made FAR more impressive donations than I did):
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Online petitions did *NOT* work for farscape. Certainly there were online petitions, but, dude, give scapers some credit.
SaveFarscape.com raised almost $100,000 in funds directed at convincing Sci-Fi and whoever else that they *would* spend money for farscape. That's not counting any labor, and all of the money spent on postage, paper, and envelopes of the THOUSANDS of letters sent to network exec's.
SaveFarscape has even gone so far as to do things like get a complete set of Farscape DVD's (about $450) into at least one library in every major metropolitan area in the U.S. - Over 80% of the U.S. has access to Farscape DVD's for free. Not to mention wacky things like BraScape, where female scapers mailed network exec's their netherwear to show that the demographic did, indeed, include female viewers. Or, how about working out a deal with the U.S. military to have DVD's at home bases for soldiers to watch at leisure?
Online petitions may have some relevance, but they certainly aren't what brought farscape back. Scapers put their money where their mouths were, and made a difference. In person, on paper, on the phone, and on the internet, they worked relentlessly.
~Will
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