Slashdot Mirror
Mirror.ac.uk to Scale Back Operations
KingDaveRa writes "It would seem that the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (www.jisc.ac.uk) have decided to withdraw funding from the www.mirror.ac.uk service. They still want to run a service, but '...perhaps on a smaller scale, and limited to the most popular mirrors. This would, however, depend upon securing sponsorship or alternative funding very quickly, and the approval of our host institutions.' This could turn out to be quite an inconvenience for the UK, as the mirror.ac.uk service has proven itself very fast and reliable."
See, that's just irritating. That's going to have quite a knock-on effect to all of the software hosted there, particularly a lot of the free stuff (something a lot of people here would likely be devastated about).
I think there will be a new mirror sponsored by the same organisation. However mirror.ac.uk are deleting all their content as we speak I believe, which isn't a problem in itself but some of that content cannot be found elsewhere easily.
It's a shame that they couldn't have been a little more organised in order to change providers seamlessly. It seems that the only people who _don't_ have access to the current mirror are going to be the new mirror providers!
You've probably noticed that people's noses get bigger as they get older. That's because old people are huge liars.
The limit of the UK gov's commitment to public IT infrastructure is putting the letter 'e' infront of common words. Public sector Microsoft weenie creep.
The library service should be mirroring both software and media, there was talk of been legally required to archive websites with the library. How I'm supposed to archive my custom database driven dynamic website (realised in C) is beyond me but I would be happy to let them host all my bandwidth draining content.
Just because they don't survive on donations, does that make it bad?
They may sell a product, but what is mirrored is not something they make money on. They are giving their ISOs away for free, and what they are giving away is benefitial to the public.
It's pretty much the same for OpenOffice... Should it not be mirrored just because it is headed by Sun?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
He's not at fault, fuck the government for forcing out yet another head of a media organisation that refuses to toe the line.
-- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
Then it wasn't being hit as hard it should have been anyways. A smart operation is going to put out every bit of that pipe they're pating for.
Vonal Declosion
This sort of funding should come from the people that it's relevant for: i.e. the owners of intercontinential links, or it should be cooperatively funded, say to be co-located at a large interconnect -- as these people wear the costs of non-mirrors.
It's not relevant for the academic community to fund these things: doing so is a historical throwback to when the networks were largely academic, and most of the users were too. That's not how it is now, and personally I'd rather see the money used to support academic concerns, not a service increasingly used by non-academic.
I think if anyone is upset about this: direct complaints to people that should be doing something about it (i.e. exchanges/interconnects, international link providers).
That's an um, interesting opinion. The government had no say in the matter. Morgan was fired because he fucked up. He should have been given the boot years ago, but he always seemed to get away with everything.
The government were entirely in the right in this case. I'm as anti-war as the next guy, but those pictures should never have been published.
he may not be directly at fault, but he is (was) responsible for the content of the paper. Tough shit.
Your university is on the American side of the Atlantic, isn't it?
He fucked up by publishing photos taken by British Army personnel apparently doing things that the Red Cross and Amnesty International have been telling the government about for some time (and the government has admitted this) only for it to be show (by the Military police...) that the photos are faked (apparently by matching scratches on vehicles no less.)
So instead of it being soldiers engaged in acts that have been reported to the government already, it is solders faking sick and degrading behaviour and passing these off as real to a newspaper. Either because they are mentally disturbed psychotics who get a kick out that sort of behaviour or in an attempt to set up the newspaper.
Now call me picky, but one is confirmation that the army has some sick and twisted soldiers while the other is confirmation that the army has some sick and twisted soldiers. The only difference is that the mirror has paid for its opposition to the war by being set up - in either event it shows that there is something fundamentally broken in the discipline and behaviour of British soldiers.
Yes, Morgan isn't a nice man, I can't stand the guy, but what is going on here stinks of an attempt to midirect the public away from the very real and serious allegations that respectable organisations have been making about British behaviour in the gulf towards a mud-slinging match against a paper that has been a thorn in the side of the government since the start of last year.
Actually this is a good example of "free" - someone was actually paying for this so it actually wasn't free, it was more like a social service.
Not really. This was hosted by the UK academic network, so it was paid for by a combination of tuition fees and UK taxes.
The primary beneficiaries would be people studying or working at UK universities, or people living in the UK -- ie, the very people who are paying for it, albeit indirectly. Yes, other people can also make use of it, but that's part of the principle of reciprocity that the whole of the internet was originally based on. That's the basis on which the content was provided that is populating the mirrors.
Why would anyone feel upset about this
Because it's an inconvenience? Because it's short sighted? Because it's a poor use of resources? Because it's yet another example of bean counters who don't understand the value of the thing that they are cutting?
(this is going *way* off topic, but I feel this needed a response... albeit that you're probably just trolling)
This is a serious blow for the truth in the UK. These pictures depicted an event that happened, they were reconstructions, not fakes.
You do realise that it was old news when the pictures were published? The story had already been run in all the papers (including the Mirror) several months earlier, and there was already an investigation into the allegations (which is still on-going).
The only reason it became newsworthy again was the existence of the pictures. If they had been real, they would have been explosive - they would have helped prove the case for the investigation, and also added the dimension of a soldier photographing the event, which itself could be construed as abuse.
However, since the pictures were staged, they did not achieve either of these points.
In fact, since the story had already been in the news, many people assumed that this was a whole new story. Their appearance the very day after the American photos first showed up was also highly suspicious (given that they were fakes, this really does add toward making it look like a malicious hoax), and had the effect of making them appear to many to be part of the same story.
However, the basic point is that the Mirror committed a serious journalistic sin by printing staged photographs and claiming they were real (repeatedly, and in the face of opposition from just about every angle). Piers Morgan has been on TV every day in the last two weeks to say that they are definitely absolutely positively genuine. He painted himself into a hole, and the only possible way out once his argument was shown to be untrue was for him to leave the newspaper. Whether it was by sacking or resigning was his choice, but his position was untenable either way.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)