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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Didn't you Brits already try letting people roam free in Austrailia instead of putting them in jail?
-- this is not a
A friend of mine who lives in Florida made life difficult for people down there. Perhaps you know him. His name is Chad.
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
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
"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."
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 &
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
sig?