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CBC Opens ZeD.cbc.ca Code
ivar writes "The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has open sourced (Apache License 2.0) the code used to build ZeD.cbc.ca. The corresponding TV show (typically consisting of content uploaded by the community) aired the announcement last night (Jan 6_, along with the Canadian broadcast premiere of Revolution OS. It's always heartening to see cool things come from a state run corporation..."
I saw this on CBC as well. At first I thought "that's cool", but then I went to the site. All it is is a standard website - there is no great CMS or anything else here. I can't imagine there is much below the HTML here... some simple server-side stuff, but nothing special.
On that note though - I do applaud the idea. All company websites' code should be Open Sourced under a free license IMO. After all, the company is not making revenue by selling that code, so what good is it to them?
I'm surprised the blurb never mentioned the actual show. It was a great documentary on the free software / linux movement. I remember reading about it online every step of the way but it was totally amazing hearing what was happening directly from the people.
You'd probably never catch that kind of open-minded programming on corporate television because it flies in the face of the conventional outlook. My favourite part was seeing Linus bring his two beautiful daughters on stage while RMS was proselytizing.
CBC is not run by the Canadian government. It's FUNDED by the Canadian government.
If the CBC were run by the government they wouldn't send so much time bashing the government. (Sometimes rightfully, sometimes not.)
Personally I think we should cut all their funding since they run advertisements just like any other station.
"It's always heartening to see cool things come from a state run corporation"
Yes, it is heartening to see my money(tax dollars), run me out of business.
BBC News is so great my parents watch it instead of American news programs. And, unlike American sitcoms, I actually laugh at Britcoms they show on PBS.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Nice to see people in general in private and public sector funded groups dishing out the code.
Not that useful? So what.
Its like that ugly tie from your sweet 80 year old Aunt --- its the thought that counts.
ACK
Anyone care to explain what this is, to those of us too lazy to read the article, and ignorant enough to not already know what it is?
--
The last digit of pi is four.
You can enjoy anything with no commercials in it... I live with a Brit.. she can't stand North American tv commercials...and to be honest I constantly wonder why we pay so much for cable that consists of 60% or more commercials.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
Chicken Cannon!
Leftist bias?
Okay, explain to me where?
Sure, if you compare it to the American Broadcasters the CBC is extremly to the left, but I haven't seen the CBC trott out the NDP on every occasion, blasting the Conservatives and only tolerating the Liberals.
It seems to me that they tend to bash on everybody rather equally.
If you mean tha the CBC is activly critizising(sp?) the big corporations and the government, then you're right. If you think that's wrong by the CBC than you are wrong.
The media (even in the US) is supposed to be the third power, the voice of the people, not the blowhorn for commerical or political interests.
If anything the CBC could use more funding (guranteed like the BBC) to get some more teeth.
I don't want a broadcaster who tells me how great the world and the government is (unless it's about terrorism) instead of telling me what's really going on.
Watch Global News if you want that, they still hope that their "news" helicopter in Toronto will find some car chases along the 401.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Any media that presented any opposing views about the war in Iraq is accused of having a "left bias". US media is skewed so much to the right wing that common sense appears to be a "leftist bias".
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
And he's still on, even though lots of people calling for him to be removed from the CBC.
Only in the same sense that lots of people have called for Howard Stern to be removed (that is, only a few loudmouths). Even though Don Cherry is as "cartoon character" as Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh, he's taken less seriously. Do you think people watch Coach's Corner for reporting?!
Anyways, the American and Canadian notions of right and left are incompatible in many ways, and most of the posts in this entire thread are off-topic so I'll shut up now.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
Why is it particularly heartening to see these things come from state run corporations?
This is my personal bias, but I figure that as tax payers, if we're paying for the development anyway why not get access to the what we're paying for ?
So, why are you paranoid about it? You offer it up as open content in the first place, they are just making it official so you can't claim otherwise later!
The problem is that it doesn't because it has leftist corporate culture that supresses anything else.
Poppycock. CBCs viewpoint is representative of the community. If you compare *ANY* western media against the pro-private-corporate-consumer viewpoint of the Corporate Media -- AND you agree with this CM -- you will feel CBC is 'leftist'.
Whats special about commercial insterest is commercial interest. In short, dont expect probing investigation into American consumer culture, its crass shallowness, ecological destruction and unsustainable economics from teh CM. Its self-interested, commercial self-censorship.
Do you think CBS is going to investigate General Electric?
Noam Chomsky is an intellectual, a scientist and a academic. If you have issue with his assessments, voice them. If you cant pallet the world he presents, because it conflicts with your dearest dogma, please, spare us the off-hand character assault.
State funded media gives an unfair advantage to one point of view, (in Canada's case the leftist bias of the CBC), at the expense of diversity of views.
All endevour will be tainted with the bias of the players. Bar none. Im not suggesting their is zero bias at the CBC, there probably is. Odds are the bias is derivative of the employees -- university educated intellectuals. Like most of their peers NOT in the CBC, they are *probably* leftists.
However, this doesnt mean that they dont take journalistic responsibility seriously. They certainly take their role more seriously in a traditional sense vs. the players in the "other model" (Corporate Media).
The Corporate Media has the means (no oversight), the motivation (profit) and the mechanics (profit-driven self-centered egos) to be biased to a greater degree (as in greater volume) and towards the goals of Corporate Interest.
State funded media has the means (ombudsman oversight), the motivation (fulfill its neutral mandate), and the mechanics (players with less to personally gain through corruption) to be biased to a smaller degree.
In short, CM is FAR AND AWAY biased and corrupt to support a particular viewpoint. State funded media is designed to tolerate less bias.
Im sorry if the News doesnt reflect your personal viewpoint. Everone is entitled to their opinion, but there is only one set of facts.
...is about as Canadian as Chrysler is American. That is, it is part of a greater corporation formed by a "merger of equals" where one of the equals was just a bit more equal than the other (in this case the Wendy's burger chain). So a significant portion of Wendys-Tim Hortons is Canadian held but the majority is American owned and managed (similar to how Chrysler is mostly German now).
Tim Hortons is still a part of Canadian culture, and relatively unknown in the US (it only has a limited presence in certain regions of the US). In Canada, there are more Tim Hortons stores than McDonalds stores. When I was in Hamilton (where the chain got its start) I can pretty much say without exaggeration that you are in easy walking distance to a Tim Hortons from any imaginable location in that city. If you've watched "Supersize Me" where they plot the McDonalds stores on a map of Manhattan, and add a couple more stores, that is kind of what a map of Hamilton would look like.
The CBC should make a documentary about Tim Hortons (oh wait--they already did, sort of--one on the hockey star and founder of the chain that bears his name). The CBC makes documentaries on nearly everything remotely to do with Canada it seems. Overall they are very good but sometimes it's like "WTF eh?"
Sure, there are specialized companies that do this of course. Most are hosting providers and the like.
Actually, most of us advertise ourselves as IT consultants. Hosting providers tend only to sell packaged software, which isn't quite the right market.
But CNN doesn't make money by selling the code that runs CNN.com. The NY Times doesn't sell the code that runs their site. MSNBC.com doesn't sell their code either.
Actually, I'd say that CNN, NY Tmies and MSNBC are in the minority for owning the copyright of all the code that runs their sites. Probably something like 99% of corporate web sites are run using packaged software with perhaps a few customisations performed by the consultant that installed and configured them for the individual site.
The code behind these types of sites could be immensely useful to someone wanting to start their own fringe-hobby news site.
It would also be immensely useful to any of the above-mentioned company's competitors who happen to currently have a substandard web site and are looking to expand into the online sector, which is probably why they don't give it away for free.
Now, I'm not going to open up the can of worms over carpet and firebombing of cities, I'm not even sure where I stand on the issues but I don't see it as being something that shouldn't be looked at. The fact is that carpet and firebombing did kill many people in these cities. People who didn't support the war or Nazies. And as i said, the CBC did stop airing the show http://www.waramps.ca/news/valour/96-04-03.html press release
For Hakim Faqiryar, the other media didn't cover that issue much. Searching the Canadian Newsstand, a newspaper database of most of the newspapers in Canada. only turned up passing references to him. There is one article about it, but that's after the liberals pushed him out of running. Searching for Hakim Faqiryar and Al-Quaida didn't turn up any results. Now Hakim Faqiryar did make anti-jewish comments and that was reported on by media (The Calgary Herald) but not by the CBC. However, CBC did cover (3 paragraph piece) the lawsuit that Hakim Faqiryar launch against Stockwell Day after Mr. Day made comments on this. I couldn't find out way come of the suit.
Neil Macdonald has been removed from the middle east file in 2003. However, he has made the odd comment on Israel /Palestinian. Neil Macdonald is biased. However, the CBC did try to move him to a place where he wouldn't comment much on Israel /Palestinian. Should the CBC fire him? Perhaps.
I'm not a huge fan of Ms. McDonough, but does being rich mean you can't call for greater taxes for rich people? Seems to me they are the best people to call for higher taxes for rich people.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/mcdonough.html from cbc, saying father was a millionaire. There are other pieces of McDonough. The rreason, I believe, the CBC doesn't attack the NDP that much is because, it's not a powerful party. It only holds 18 seats out of 302. Why spend time on a party with only 18 seats? Plus, the CBC doesn't attack leaders. At least on their website. I couldn't find a story attacking a leader as a person.
It's "The Greatest Canadian" not the best Canadian. And where all the portrayals "entirely complete and balanced" of course not. It was just a show to raise the profile of some of the Canadians in our past. And wasn't wrong with the voting? The "vote as much as you want'? Anyone, could vote as much as they want.
"However, the CBC completely missed the fact that there was a husband and wife running in adjacent Vancouver-area ridings for the Conservatives, and didn't mention it until they had actually won" Really? http://www.cbc.ca/story/election/national/2004/06/ 29/married_mp040629.html
I'll give you that the CBC can be a bit too "Ontario is the center of Canada" It's also possible they didn't know about the Grewals. After all, Layton is the leader of a federal party. The Grewals are just backbencher MPs, and before the election weren't even MPs.
The CBC is Ontario biased. And maybe more left then right, but it's far from "Very left"
The Guardian, as has already been mentioned, is fairly left-wing. The Independent is perhaps a little to the left, economically speaking, but very socially liberal. And I suggest that you take a look at the Socialist Worker one day if you want to know what real left-wing attitudes look like...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Profit is self-interest. Self interest is bias.
Riigghht... Your argument is clear. It's still total crap. Despite your confusion over meaning of the term "bias" does not mean "self-interest". If you'd bother to check a dictionary, you'd find the most relevant definition is "A preference or an inclination". Check the link for a more complete definition. So think about it? Do human beings all have preferences & inclinations? Yep. Anything magical about working for a state sponsored corp that removes said preferences and inclinations? Nope. Conclusion? I think I've made my point.
People are biased. The news is biased. The CBC is biased. You're biased. I'm biased, and your Aunt Mabel is biased. It's called having a worldview. Get over it. Stop looking for that magical unbiased source because it does not exist!
The way to get the best news is to check a variety of sources. End of story. The problem isn't that the CBC is biased so much as it's biased and government funded. Funding one view is a bad idea because that gives unfair precendence to that one view. Or if you want to indulge the fantasy that there is not editorial direction at the CBC, then it's a bad idea to give funding to a limited subset of views).
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