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Slashback: Wikipedia Correction, NASA Tape, BPI Rejected
Reuters offers correction to Wikipedia slam. junger writes "Reuters put out a hit piece on Wikipedia, saying that the encyclopedia wasn't credible in 'covering' the breaking news of the death of Enron's Ken Lay, but then Reuters has to correct their own story because they couldn't properly identify one of their sources."
Lord of the Rings stage show ends. l8f57 writes "After only 3 months, the 'Lord Of The Rings' stage show in Toronto, Ontario Canada is ending early. According to the Globe & Mail, the producers are blaming the critics for giving it a bad review. It looks like the last show is scheduled for September 3, 2006. Ticketmaster still has tickets available for shows up to the end."
Duct tape holds NASA together again. vasanth writes to tell us NASA has solved another problem with their favorite repair device, a roll of duct tape. From the article: "First pressed into service during the homemade repairs that saved Apollo 13 from disaster in 1970, the tape has since been at the center of a variety of ingenious quick fixes dreamed up by the space agency's scientists. The latest patch-up will secure British astronaut Piers Sellers to his jet-propelled backpack today for the final spacewalk of the shuttle Discovery's 13-day mission to the International Space Station."
UK ISP rejects BPI request. Glyn writes "One of the ISPs that the British recording industry tried to strong-arm into terminating customers' accounts on accusation of file-sharing has responded with an emphatic no. From the response: 'You have sent us a spreadsheet setting out a list of 17 IP addresses you allege belong to Tiscali customers, whom you allege have infringed the copyright of your members, together with the dates and times and with which sound recording you allege that they have done so. You have also sent us extracts of screenshots of the shared drive of one of those customers. You state that such evidence is "overwhelming". However, you have provided no actual evidence in respect of 16 of the accounts. Further, you have provided no evidence of downloading taking place nor have you provided evidence that the shared drive was connected by the relevant IP address at the relevant time. Similar requests we have dealt with in the past, have included such information and, indeed, the bodies conducting those investigations have felt that a court would consider it necessary to see such evidence, supported by sworn statements, before being able to grant any order.'"
Maine renews middle-school laptop program. markhb writes "The State of Maine has renewed its controversial 'Laptops for Middle-schoolers' program this week. Apple won the contract once again, this time for $41 million, and gets to provide another 36,000 brand-spanking-new iBooks. New this time around: all districts will be required to let the kids take the laptops home, and private and parochial schools will also be invited to join in the fun!"
British ID cards get a rethink. OutOfMyTree writes "The British ID card scheme will miss its planned roll-out date of 2008, according to leaked emails seen by the Sunday Times. In fact civil servants leading the project are afraid that if government ministers keep on 'ignoring reality' the whole mess may be bad enough to delay the acceptance of ID cards for another generation. The contracts already in place are in difficulties because of 'the amount of rethinking going on about identity management', and the escalating costs."
China to further regulate internet use. anaesthetica writes "Director of the Information Office of the State Council, Cai Wu, has announced that new internet control measures are needed. New initiatives include monitoring blogs and search engines, as well as mandatory cellphone and website registration. With 16 million bloggers and 97 million search engine users, the Chinese authorities see search engines as the 'choke point' for information. From the article: 'The potential new regulations, which are still in the discussion stage, are being considered at a time of exploding Internet and cellphone use that has created the freest atmosphere of communication this country has known under Communist rule, despite strenuous government efforts to contain it.'"
I'm a pretty big fan of LOTR, and I saw the show with my family a few weeks ago.
Its as marvelous a show as someone could make of LOTR. That being said, after seeing it I think LOTR just doesn't appear adapt well to live theatre. They spent tons of money on it, the choreography is astounding, etc, etc, and portions of it are actually from the books and weren't in the movies (kudos to the writers).
But in the end, they know that its a double-edged sword: they get tickets because of the movies, but they get bad reviews because of them too, since everyone goes there expecting to see some "live" form of the LOTR films. And its not. Its theatre.
But as an avid fan of both LOTR and theatre, I still highly recommend it.
Take this as you will.
- Anon
Due to the Privacy regulations in the U.K. it wouldn't matter if they wanted to provide the data or not.
They are not allowed.
They need a court order.
Easier to administer, and no known viruses in the wild and both potential exploits were either patched before the exploit was noticed or within hours afterwards.
When reliability is needed because kids are smart and will get around other defenses you don't want windows that break easily. hence why most schools have safety glass for their doors and windows.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Nope it's more they are covering their arse. read it again the BPI sent 17 notices, but 16 were lacking evidence. That means the 17th had enough evidence for the ISP lawyers to allow it to be "processed" in whatever the normal way is.
the ISP is simply not going to be sued by their customers for canceling accounts when no proof of illegal activities were done. Provide the evidence, and they will comply.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
My wife and I went to go see it in the spring and enjoyed it very much. Of course, we are both big LotR fans and know the story well. A large portion of the audience were seniors who get the tickets as part of their yearly subscription. Some walked out - there's know way you could follow the story without already knowing it ahead of time.
As a show for fans of the stories, I'd recommend it. For people who just love good theatre - this probably isn't it. Everything you'd like in a show - character development, a clear story line, etc. just aren't there.
I'm sure some of you are going to say "Mac OS", but I'm not at all convinced that Mac OS is a win for educational users, as there appears to be a far better selection of educational software for Windows.
If I was a Maine taxpayer, I think I'd be calling and writing my state legislators demanding an investigation.
Im confused the bombardment of UV rays from the sun would mean that most plastic materials would turn into goop and become useless. Does that mean duct tape can withstand UV rays or is it just a kludge? I know there is certain tapes developed from NASA that I use every day but it isn't duct tape (It's Kapton tape).
First of all, they did actually use Kapton tape for the repair. It appears that somehow the news reports have confused it with duct tape because both are carried on shuttle missions.
I seriously doubt that duct tape is rated for outer space. It can withstand a wide temperature range (after all, it was designed to tape ducts, right?) but surely not as wide as Kapton (see the linked article.) Also, the adhesive on the tape has to be space-rated, and I'm not sure duct tape satisfies that requirement.
Another issue for materials used in space: they must not release gasses when exposed to a vacuum. This is not so much of an issue for the shuttle and the astronauts (the space environment around the shuttle is pretty filthy already) but it is important for unmanned satellites with sensitive instruments that can pick up such gasses as false readings of the space environment. Even a fingerprint on a surface exposed to a vacuum can cause a problem -- another good reason to assemble everything in a clean room and wear gloves. IIRC, Kapton satisfies all of these requirements, and I really doubt duct tape would. You can smell duct tape, so I suppose it would outgas in a vacuum like crazy, especially if you let it heat up.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
after all, it was designed to tape ducts, right?
Actually, nope. Duct usage came later, and really isn't a good idea.
Remember:
A G4 Mac with Classic support would fit the education market's needs better, for now. Once OS X-ported software gets Universal Binary support, and once people finally let go of Classic, then we'll see the education market adopt the Intel Macs in much larger numbers. (With all PowerPC Macs except for the Power Mac G5 discontinued, Classic users better find or code alternatives to their programs if they intend on upgrading.)
No, they are really getting iBooks. (The online Apple Store for Education at my school is still selling iBook G4s, even today). An end-of-the-line iBook would give you better performance at running PowerPC applications than a MacBook would (PPC emulation on a x86 results in a performance hit, although Rosetta seems to be handling the task well; and most big software packages won't have Universal Binaries until 2007). Remember that many education users still use Classic applications; you can't run Classic on an Intel Mac.
Buying a PowerPC Mac today isn't a crazy idea, especially if you want something proven to be reliable (have you heard about the problems plauging the MacBook and MacBook Pro lately?) and works flawlessly with existing (and old) software.
I say again -- beating Chinese censorship is easy in the short term, very hard in the long term, but probably also doable in the long term. But it needs a lot of smart techie brainpower from the outside to beat. http://www.monashreport.com/2006/04/17/how-to-beat -chinese-censorship-operation-peking-duck/ is my idea of a good place to start.
To err is human. To forgive is good system design.
I saw it in its 4th week. I live in Toronto and bought a Mirvish series subscription just because of the LOTR. I sat through "Moving Out" as a result. Perhaps that is to everyone's taste, but I have discovered that I now intensely hate Billy Joel.
Anyway, yes, I would argue that the LOTR onstage was pretty bad. It's long. Three acts. Over three hours. My wife did not make the third act.
Visually, stunning. Seeing the Balrog at the end of Scene 1 was probably the best bit of the entire show. I would argue that probably act 1 was the best of the show. The only song I could remember afterward was the Prancing Pony number where they sang "The Road goes On"...
Acts 2 and 3 were just getting long and longer. Yes, ents look cool. And orcs walk neat. But think about how hard it is to convey something like Helm's deep with a covey of 20 actors and assorted extras.
I would argue that probably a bigger dose of snip-snip was necessary.
Gollum was ok. Frodo and sam, blah blah. Maybe I gots the Frodo fatigue.
Also Gandalf sucked. Did not like him at all.
One thing I did like was they did have the Scourge of the Shire at the end.
They didn't say "no". They simply asked for more evidence before they act. They also set out the terms under which they would accept that evidence, based on previous successful legal challenges.
"Give us this, that, and the other and we'll play along."
Essentially they just pumped the ball back into the BPIs court, now we get to wait for their return volley.
I get the impression the BPI just shot out a standard letter from their legal dept., but the accusation's not sufficient evidence for the ISP to act against its customers. If they can provide the evidence the ISP is asking for we'll see a continuation of this story.
If not, the BPI will probably just try another tack.
(apologies for the mixed sporting metaphors. I know, as geeks, we try to avoid getting involved in physical activities...)
Caution: May contain nuts.
I found a deployment page on the MLTI site that has PDFs of all the materials that were sent out to the school systems. They are, indeed, as you say, G4 iBooks, with 1 GB RAM, OS X 10.4, a 40 GB hard drive and a new "online learning management system," StudyWiz, preinstalled, whatever that is. Note that the StudyWiz website claims the software is being installed in "all schools in the state," which is just plain wrong (it's only the 7th and 8th grades that are getting the MLTI stuff).
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
read it again the BPI sent 17 notices, but 16 were lacking evidence. That means the 17th had enough evidence for the ISP lawyers to allow it to be "processed" in whatever the normal way is.
Actually, they said 16 completely lacked evidence, and one had crappy evidence. They responded with a no for all 17.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
We could apply semi-protection, but at the same time you should have seen the article about the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Speculation was rife with, at one point, a edit coming in every 1-2 seconds. However, by now we have a very factual and very informative article. It's not always good to place semi-protection on a rapidly evolving article.
I think the bottom line, which everyone has so far missed, is that you should be checking your sources on Wikipedia before trusting it completely. I know I do, and I'm an administrator on the project.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.