Slashdot Mirror
BBC to Provide Extensive RSS
Georgie2032 writes "The BBC News Online's Editor states that beginning in the middle of May, the BBC will be 'completely liberating the availability of its content' using its Really Simple Syndication (RSS) tool. 'So in May we'll be happy for outside websites to dip in and take our headlines'"
When you install Firefox, there is a BBC RSS feed installed by default (as "Latest Headlines"). So what's new?
If they do this for press releases, Slashdot won't even need editors anymore!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition /front_page/rss091.xml
But why would they want to do that? Considering AFP's suit against Google and all, it seems rather strange they would allow other websites to have BBC's news on their pages.
..Its a trap.
sure they say its ok now, but just when you feel safe publishing their stories that claim will have mysteriously dissapeared from their site..
thats when the lawsuits start.
Starsucks
I don't really understand what RSS has to do with this. Why would adding an additional protocol, suddenly make them more amenable to others "dipping" into their headlines? After all, the HTML technology of the web allows others to use their headlines. So, does this statement mean they weren't happy about others using their headlines before?
What is this magical property of RSS that makes the BBC happier about having their headlines used elsewhere?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Why would they wait until AFTER the U.K. elections? It seems like it would be more advantageous to open it up now, before the elections.
must be a *really* slow news day... In other news, almost every other website on the planet provides RSS feeds.
The BBC is a public information service and doesnt rely on advert to get money but every english perosn paying for the privilage of having a TV or radio, this may be an alien concept to many americans but this is why the BBC can give other sites access to their RSS feed, because they dont cling to users visiting their site to keep their heads above water and resorting to obnoxious flash adverts and popups
...welcome our new... no... who cares. Too bloody apathetic at this hour... No, can't even manage a Python reference either.
:q
Still faster to listen to fellow techs from Britain online and a lot more colourful too. This can go in the "Yes, but can they make it into efficient text for my cell browser?" Department.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I'll stick with my "Fair and Balanced" Fox News broadcasts/websites. Afterall, those evil Europeans are nothing but future terrorists and Christ killers!
Who do they think they are syndicating content without permission from US Copyright courts? [sic]
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
That nebulous polling 'technology' that almost nobody outside of the 'blogosphere' cares much about...
Power to the Peaceful
I think somebody just found their towel...
However, all is not well with the news content. The BBC is famous for switching to "propaganda mode" whenever British interests are involved, as good as they are with things that are far away. Also, there are been repeated charges of a systematic anti-Israeli bias in their coverage.
They do great work, but for all the gushing, do remember they have their share of problems.
installed by Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and is now all fired up about RSS.
The screensaver shows a swirling mist of RSS headlines from a selected feed, and every few seconds zooms in on one, lets you read it, then twists it away into vapor.
Hard to describe, but there's a movie here which shows it in action.
Pure eye candy of course, but majorly cool!
"Extensive Really Simple Syndication?" So it's both extensive (Large in extent, range, or amount) and simple (composed of only one element). Hmm.
Kinda like the MPEG-4 "Advanced Simple Profile," maybe.
Because you aren't using Adblock?
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
drink and post on Slashdot
The BBC is an out of date tax on broadcast media that it morally wrong and uncompetitive. The BBC itself is an organization riddled with beaurocracy, massive egos, huge salaries, unhealthy festering cliques and class A drug habits paid for off the back of the British people.
Yes, it's all those things, and yet it does a better job than all your free market organizations riddled with their bureaucracy, massive egos, huge salaries, unhealthy festering cliques and class A drug habits paid for off the back of their subscribers.
You simply don't like the fact that our TV crap is better quality than your TV crap, doesn't irritate the hell out of people with adverts, and is free to RSS to the world. Grow up, and enjoy the competition resulting from a different market model. Oh and by the way, our tax is a hell of a lot less than you guys pay for TV.
Couldn't there be a Third Way (tm) whereby one could opt out of BBC News but keep the rest of the programming? Or maybe they could create separate news broadcasts for each of the UK's major political blocs?
sig semper tyrannis!
BBC news is also a bit surreal, in my experience; at least its World News portion, when you will on certain occasions hear -- I am not making this up -- music by IDM/electronic artists such as Boards Of Canada and Aphex Twin playing in the background to certain prominent news stories, for no apparent reason. Particularly some of the more sinister-sounding tracks from SAW2 playing whenever they show footage of the Palestinian territories whenever Israel and Palestine get into their usual childish scuffles.
I can't say I can imagine the BBC's motive in doing this, acting as a sort of subliminal-MTV while presenting news stories, but the British certainly aren't stupid; there's a utilitarian purpose behind it somewhere. I can't say I've ever heard music other than that generic, cliche "deet deet dee-deet deet" inter-commercial news music playing on American news shows.
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
Ummm.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the 'honestreporting.com' site does seem to have a single aim of increasing the amount of PR favouring Jewish interests.
If you are after balance, it strikes me as odd that you would refer
I am not a particular fan of the BBC, and its 'youth' shows are shockingly bad, especially radio 1, which is for tards. But its news is pretty good, in an up-itself British sort of way.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Great job !! we appreciate it.
Riiz
Yes, but one can say the same about American media being too pro-Israeli. Notice when you watch American TV, there is little coverage of actions taken by the Israeli army in the occupied territories.
Example from your link:
"This is a highly sensitive issue," the narrator says, but "the majority of neo-conservatives have been and remain Jewish...are strongly pro-Zionist and want to topple regimes in the Middle East to help Israel..." Says bbcwatch, "It is hard to find clear blue water between these theories and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Umm, why else did the Iraq war take place?
Suicide Killers: Everyman (4/3/02) : The psychology and ideology of the suicide bomber worldwide. "One is made to feel sorry for and sympathetic with the Palestinian suicide bomber who says he 'loved life and wanted to be a doctor. Occupation has murdered my dreams.'"
I don't care for suicide bombers, but when your family is killed and their house is bulldozed by Israeli tanks, you do feel bad for them.
Looks at the build-up of Israel's nuclear weapons program. The documentary begins by asking the ominous questions "Which country in the Middle East has undeclared nuclear weapons?" "Which country in the Middle East has undeclared biological and chemical capabilities?" and "Which country in the Middle East has no outside inspections?"
This is true though. Israel has a nucleur weapons program in a very heated region, yet other countries around dare to build one because of US pressure. How is this fair?
The hidden world of Palestinian terrorists (referred to throughout as 'militias' and 'martyrs'). "Terrorist bombings of Israeli civilians are painted as an entirely legitimate activity, almost heroic."
And the Israeli army do not do the same to Palestinans (killing young children armed with stones)?
Those arguments presented in the article of the link you posted are very naive....
I think thats probably due to the israeli's killing their reporters and carmera men. Its kind of a hard thing to get over experically when its all caught on film. Maybe another reason for it is there is a general anti-Israeli sentiment in british society. Note this is not the same an anti-semitism but related to the israeli-Palestinian conflict, which many find abhorrent.
:)
Considering the amount of disagreements the BBC has had with the goverment of the day durin its time maybe it should be called an Anti-Propaganda Mode.
The BBC while not perfect is generally held to alot higher standard then other broadcasters, and I think that is something to be proud of.
Shoot me
It is interesting to note that the website that is given to highlight the anti-israeli bias (http://www.honestreporting.com/) in the BBCs coverage is affiliated to http://www.israelpetition.com/, which has the following quote at the top of their webpage
"For Zion's sake I will not be silent,
and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest."
Isaiah 62:1
While individual programmes broadcasted by the BBC may contain some bias, I think it is fair to assume that honestreporting.com has an even larger bias, given its affiliations!
Lol. Describing a culture of bias and as your 'evidence' you provide a link to honestreporting.
Honestreporting is an unvarnished propaganda vehicle for right wing Israelis. Its a joke and has has been discredited numerous times.
Try here instead.
Israel doesn't seem to play play nice either, though...
The licence fee is likely to turn into a tax on computers at some point? If you have a broadband connection and don't watch TV, they'll be after you. Because, you see, you COULD be using it to watch stuff on the BBC website...
I don't mind paying a licence fee to watch TV, but I draw the line at a yearly tax on owning a computer. Different market model? Yeah, if you think extending monopolies shamelessly is good, this is a great market model.
Hrm. According to the article, BBC's current RSS feeds are for personal use. However, slashdot has been republishing the BBC Tech News in a slashbox for quite some time.
Further investigation shows this page which indicates that UK Based sites can also make free use of the syndicated feeds. It seems other sites need to license them.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
Support ethnic cleansing in Palestine and help censor the American press!
If you are at an American University or further education college we are currently recruiting active censorship drones to spy on fellow students, lecturers and guest speakers on behalf of the Israeli government.
We can actively stifle democratic thought and criticism of Israeli fascist oppression.
-But only with your help!
Free housing.
In six short weeks we can show you how to build a rogue state by demolishing existing homes in Palestine and building new houses on top!
We are currently looking for experienced bulldozer drivers with a large western bank balance to emigrate to the expansionist state of Israel and call it home.
Simply choose a plot of land and start building! Its easy peesy!!
If your chosen plot is currently occupied by a Palestinian family, dont worry
-simply build over them!
Its as easy peesy as eeny meeny miney mo!
We can protect your future residential developments on occupied land with fully experienced snipers in full body armour and appropriately armed Apache helicopters kindly donated by the American public.
If you are an American citizen with a view to emigrating to warmer climes and a view of the Mediterranean, you may also be eligible for a fraction of the 3,000,000,000 (yes thats 3 Billion!) dollars donated every year by American tax payers to help support our broken-ass state.
Due to our endless appetite for weapons of mass destruction our economy is unsustainable and we require your contribution and support. WMDs don't come cheap you know. It costs a fortune to terrorise a whole region.
Our military personnel can barely afford to maintain our arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons, spy satellites and attack submarines.
Give a man a gun and he can kill a Palestinian child. Give him a helicopter and he can kill them all.
Part-time vacancies available
We are currently in construction of the world record breaking apartheid wall surrounding the largest ethic ghetto since Krakow.
The Israeli military is hiring expatriates preferably with a military background to monitor the prisoners and maintain watchtowers and sniper nests. If you are blinded by a covetousness of other peoples land, but yet have a keen eye with a sniper scope you would be the ideal candidate for our border watchtower guard division.
We need your help. Sponsor an Israeli colonizer.
Do it today.
P.s.
if anybody criticises you, just point a finger an call them anti-Semite.
It worked for the Liberty.
Meanwhile, there are also persistent claims of systematic pro-Israeli bias.
l
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2402.shtm
Seems to me, they've got the balance pretty right.
See here for how it might be done.
...and specifically allowed big news sites (like slashdot) to use their RSS to generate news boxes like those found here. They didn't allow every man and his blog to use it (waste of resources) but looks now like they're going to.
I am NaN
Well until the semantic web takes off. We'll just have to put up with these "I don't understand, because I didn't try" posts.
There's a lot of potential in a machine-readable web. But there's always that 'Y2K' style hump to get over.
The typical BBC pattern is get everyone hooked on the Sopranos, Twin Peaks, [insert your favorite series here], then once everyone is *really* into it, replace the time slot with Snooker. Happines every single time. Of course they promise to bring the series back 'in the future'... but anyone with a life can't keep up with their whims. And for what? Snooker?! How come Sopranos .torrents are busy(?); ever seen a snooker .torrent?
It must be a winning formula though. They are consistent. I love RSS, but can't get into the beeb. Fuck snooker. Can RSS save 'em? RSS is pretty powerful, but I doubt it's enough.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
"Between BBC, CNN and Fox you'll have enough peaces to figure out what is spin and what is fact.
I don't beleave it's remotely reasonable to expect any news agentcy to be entirely free of bies so it's up to the viewers to be fair and balenced due to there being no such animal in the press."
Isn't the Internet suppose to be "The great liberator"? And yet complaints about "old, and busted" news sources still abound.
Maybe a room full of geeks can come up with some way of tapping into sources, and filtering for the wheat.
There's no anti-Israeli bias in the British media, or indeed the British population in general.
The reason that these allegations are made is because the Israeli government is used to the overwhelming pro-Israeli bias in the US media. When foreign (not just British) media displays any kind of balance (by, say, criticising a decision made by the Israeli government) then cries of 'Anti-Semite' go up.
I, for one, must be particularly ignorant.
I have always thought that a semite was someone who spoke a semitic language such as hebrew or arabic.
I have never understood why a person is refered to as anti-semitic if they are critical of Israel's policy with dealing with Palestinians and not critical of Palestinian tactics towards Israel... after all, they are both semites, yes?
Oh who cares anyway.
Back to the Beeb argument, licence fee is about £125 ($250 ish) pa. Subsription to pay tv is a minimum of £20 pcm. Yes, there are more channels, but how many of them do you actually watch? More than the 30 you can get for free or as part of the licence fee? If you do, you should probably get off the sofa before you have a coronary anyway.
Have a nice day.
Correct w/ regard to the definition of a semite, but wrong for the definition of an anti-semite.
Anti-Semitism was term coined to specificaly refer to hatred against Jews, not semites in general. Read that for more info than I can be bothered to type.
No wonder "meme" is an English word
no its greek actually
[Shortening (modeled on gene), of mimeme from Greek mimma, something imitated, from mimeisthai, to imitate. See mimesis.]
even the American dictionary gets that right, i guess your schooling didnt though, not suprising though.
The CBC has already been doing this for some time. Podcasts, too.
With the Beeb GIVING IT AWAY ... are all the hardworking media whores going to starve?
aaaaaaaaaah! Fair enough.
Is there any particular reason why every post on Slashdot that offers a critical angle on the BBC is modded down as a Troll ?
The BBC is run by humans. It has flaws like any other organization. It's funding is often regarded as inappropriate and unfair by many people, and remains controversial to others. It would be nice if Slashdot reflected a broad range of views, rather than trying to silence all and any voice that is critical toward the BBC and rewarding all voices giving praise to it.
thats really cool, wonder if there is one availiable for windows or linux ?
Microsoft is trying to shoehorn Longhorn into the public consciousness, knowing that Tiger is going to shred them otherwise.
Is foamy thick and rich enough?
now is the time to make it easier to use with Firefox. Instead of that lame error about xml stylesheets, do the obvious thing and offer a bookmark.
Do you really have to do all that editing of live bookmarks etc to add an RSS feed (on the 99% of sites which don't give you the little icon in the bottom right corner of the screen automatically)?
I think there prefectly fare to the Israeli's, and it's the national viewpoint from most of england, we like to side with the small guy. Though the terrorist attacks on civilians is just wrong.
Though I really wish after the 2nd world war everyone had gone 'oh thank god were all alive, now lets live in peace, whatever your neighbours belief'
Hey I'm a dreamer.
Well done!!! You just offended the Licence payers who live in Scotland, Wales and Northen Ireland.
You're seriously telling us that a Scot would pay his license fee?
No, Anonymous illiterate Coward, it's English. The Greek word, as you yourself quote, was "mimma". The French word was "même", meaning "same". Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist at Oxford (where they also publish a dictionary), introduced the term as an info parallel to "gene", in his landmark _The Selfish Gene_. But then, your rudimentary grammar is consistent with a mind that doesn't even absorb the other, more accurate, etymologies on the page where you found your inadequate one, because it's not at the top of the page.
Now that I've schooled you, take another lesson: don't reproduce. You're in over your head, and drowned in the meme pool, Anonymous unfit Coward.
--
make install -not war
I dont know about you, but i never sit down and take the time to watch or study screensavers. they usually appear when i'm away from the computer. in fact usually when im away poer-saving mode kicks in. in fact i fail to see any point in such frivolous eye-candy. sure you can do it, but why would you want to? plus thats just about the worst way i can imagine to view / read news. its like ads on TV.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
There used to be an awesome screensaver for Windows 3.1 when I was a kid. It was a guy on a stranded island (that was about 20 feet wide with 1 coconut tree in the middle). He would do various comedic things. I totally forget the name of it, but it was an awesome screensaver. I used to spend loads of time just sitting there and watching what he did.
Back on topic though, I think that RSS screensaver is pretty cool. Gives me lots of ideas for future projects. For example, say you're an web page admin and you have multiple monitors. You could have it setup the so the screensaver would show graphs or other statistics related to your server(s) on one idle monitor. I'm sure this has been done before, I just havent heard about it.
Spiffy looking colours and charts would be pretty cool, kinda like seti@home, it looks neat, even if you don't have a clue what's actually going on.
Actually, the fee is only payable for televisions, radios don't need a license. BBC radio is paid for out of the TV license fee. BBC World Service radio is paid for by the government Foreign Office as a propaganda service (it does a very good job as well).