The problem is that you're equating the idea that all opinions have an equal right be voiced to the idea that all opinions are equally correct (or incorrect, as the case may be). To answer your question: of course factual accuracy matters. Acknowledging that errors (or malicious misinformation) can sneak in is not equivalent to denying that facts both exist and matter. It's a trade-off. The most that can be fairly derived from the philosophy behind Wikipedia is that the potential benefits of an open content encyclopedia outweigh the potential dangers.
The dynamic is a fairly simple one, really: the premise behind Wikipedia implies that there are advantages to public editing which are not available via traditional research sources. These benefits include rapid turn around, increased detail, and a breadth of coverage a source like Britannica could never hope to attain. Yes, the converse to that is that Wikipedia will almost certainly have a larger (if still comparatively small) number of your tinfoil-hat janitors who ocassionally muck things up. And successful use of Wikipedia requires that the user be aware of this fact. But that does not greatly reduce the overall value of Wikipedia as a reference source.
This is, of course, a difficult thing for people used to traditional encyclopedias to get used to. But traditional encyclopedias have their own set of protocols which would be equally uncomfortable were we not so used to using them. Generations of teachers and librarians have warned students away from using encyclopedias for serious, detailed reference work for exactly those reasons. A user needs to know how to use Britannica no less than that user needs to know how to use Wikipedia.
But, then again, it's not like Wikipedia doesn't have systems in place for handling situations like the one you outline, anyway. There's a veritable bible of proper contributor ettiquette, and, when that fails (as it ocassionally does, if never as much as one might fear) there are the mediation and arbitration committees. In a case where one presentation of facts is demonstrably wrong, provided the "expert" party can adequately prove his or her case (which they should be able to do, otherwise their so-called "expert" contributions are of little value to anyone, really...), there's much less of a problem than naysayers like to suggest.
Seriously, though, there are plenty of encyclopedias out there which only experts have any hope of contributing to. These are, of course, invaluable resources. But they're not Wikipedia. The problem with segregating "expert opinion" from "everything else" on a project like Wikipedia is that you wind up with the worst of all worlds: the "expert" set doesn't have the breadth of "everything else" set, and the "everything else" set suffers from the absence of expert opinion.
That is certainly not the premise or philosophy behind Wikipedia. As an editorial showcase, Wikipedia is hardly well designed. The ability to edit articles (and, by extension, remove or change incorrect information) only makes sense if you accept that there is a difference between truth and falsehood.
I think criticism of Wikipedia generally tends to miss the fact that most contributors recognize that bad data can sneak in, and that it's impossible to ensure 100% reliability. The rationale for Wikipedia merely suggests that the "open" approach offers some benefits not available to traditional encyclopedias (specifically, the breadth of specialized, niche or quickly changing information).
As someone who is an "expert" in at least one field (MLS degree), I tend to think that most criticism of Wikipedia is a bit naive: it overlooks shortcomings of traditional reference sources (print encyclopedias, etc.) simply because most people are familiar with them. We know how to read Encyclopedia Britannica, we know what to expect, and we know what to look out for, even if we often do so unconsciously. Wikipedia is an entirely new approach, and most people are still approaching it as they would traditional sources. Once things settle down and people become used to the idiosyncracies of Wikipedia as they have to other sources, I think it will be recognized for what it is: a valuable reference source that does not replace traditional encyclopedias anymore than traditional encyclopedias replaced research lithographs.
(Not to suggest that there aren't things that can be done to tweak Wikipedia so that, in Mr. Sanger's words, "the general public can regard [it] as reliable." But I think that's really something quite different than the sort of radical departure most such suggestions invariably seem to take.)
I think the basic problem with all of these criticisms of Wikipedia's reliability, or "anti-elitism" is that they flatly miss the point. The very reason we're having these sorts of discussions now are because Wikipedia's original model and ethos have been effective. Yes, there are always problems and pitfalls along the way, but the point of the matter is that no one would be arguing about how badly Wikipedia needs a stricter editorial review process (or whatever) if it was a collection of a dozen odd incomplete articles that no one ever bothered to contribute to....
Wikipedia was built on the backs of the thousands of users who have contributed to it. Some of these contributors were bona fide academic experts in a specific field, others were just interest amateurs. But in both cases, they contributed because they could, and, most importantly, because the entire philosophy of the project not only allows for, but encourages, that sort of contribution. We've reached the point where we people can start to take Wikipedia seriously enough to ponder questions like the ones Mr. Sanger brings up.
Wikipedia is not anti-elitist. That's a downright silly allegation. It does not specially privilege "elites," but they are likewise no more discriminated against than anyone else. The problem Mr. Sanger is addressing is ultimately not how eliminate anti-elitism, but how to institute pro-elitism. Which is absolutely fine, if your goal is to produce a traditional encyclopedia the likes of Britannica. But to encourage a special privilege for experts conversely discourages the participation of non-experts: if you make it so that average users can no longer edit Wikipedia articles, or make it enough of a chore that they no longer want to, then the entire project isn't Wikipedia anymore. And what's worse is if you appropriate the work they've already contributed in the process. It's the functional equivalent of a software company hosting an open source project which then they turn around and close once it's progressed to a certain point.
But more than that, it's a denial of what's gotten Wikipedia to where it is now in the first place. Without the active participation of all users, expert or not, it's unlikely Wikipedia would have gotten very far to begin with. To change it into something it isn't (and never aspired to be) now is silly. To imply that the contributions of non-experts are no longer desired because otherwise Wikipedia will never occupy the same privileged position as Encyclopedia Britannica is misguided. Wikipedia is not Britannica. It does some things better than Britannica, and it does some things worse than Britannica. While some specific failings can be addressed whilst maintaining the core of the Wikipedia philosophy, the key is to do so without damaging that which Wikipedia does well.
I'm a long time Mozilla/Firefox user and supporter, and have used MSIE only infrequently for the past four or five years (basically on when I'm stuck using someone else's machine). So don't construe this as an attack on Firefox/a defense of Internet Explorer....
But Firefox has a couple of hurdles to overcome to supplant Microsoft in terms of browser share. Most users have been weened on IE, and are familiar with the various eccentricities of Microsoft's browser. Furthermore, it's already there, easy and ready to use. Firefox's small window of opportunity comes as a result of Microsoft's poor record on security concerns. The Microsoft FUD machine only needs to shed enough doubt on Firefox's touted security improvements to make Joe User decide that what he sees as a only a slight improvement in terms of security is offset by the familiarity of IE. The question isn't "Do I trust Firefox more than IE," it's "Is it worth messing around with Firefox when I'm already used to IE?"
Firefox is, IMO, easily the superior browser. But I'm already a convert. While I'm sure Microsoft would love to have me pick up IE again, what matters more to them is stopping my friends and family from flocking to Firefox at the expense of IE. And it's those people (still 80% of the market, at least) who are the target of this "is Firefox trustworthy?" talk.
I disagree with you about "Glass Elevator" not being as good as the original book. It was... different, to be sure, and it the format was such that I'm not sure it would translate particularly well into a movie (given that it was basically two stories loosely connected into one).
But it had, IMO, a premise just as interesting as the original, and some of the scariest moments of any book I read as a child (the Vermicious Knids still give me nightmares, on occassion). Actually, I'd really be more interested in seeing Burton's take on that book than the original, as its mixture of dark humor and horror seems to better fit his traditional style....
They have fixed it: they eliminated the damned thing from the trunk build back in June. As for why this fix never got integrated into the branch build in time for the 1.0 release... who knows. Stupidity, I guess.
In the meantime, there's this extension which takes care of the problem pretty well.
Well, yeah. Disney just shut down its traditional animation studio (though it wasn't directly related to "Emperor's New Groove," since that came out years before the shutdown...). But my understand was that it was less to do with trying to spite Eisner, and more to do with Eisner trying to spite Roy Disney, who had been one of the strongest holdouts for traditional animation in the company, and whom had a rather public falling-out with Eisner a few months back....
Why wouldn't it? It seems that it's an issue of states' rights, which is supposed to be the particular forte of the Republican party, after all. This ban, if anything, is limiting the rights of states to tax and/or regulate within their borders.
And, of course, it's worth pointing out that both the permanent moratorium in the House, and the temporary moratorium in the Senate, are bipartisan measures. Indeed, the article in question features a quote from a congressional Democrat support (wait for it...) the permanent ban. Those darned tax'n'spend Democrats, trying to permanently ban a form of taxation....:-) Also as food for thought, Bill Clinton came out in support of various bans of internet taxation while he was in office.
To my knowledge, there's never been much of a party-line consensus on the subject: in general, representatives from tech-heavy districts support these sorts of bans, because they see it as damaging to their regional economies. Given that many of these tech havens are in major cities, which tend, generally, to swing blue, Democrats have been just as strongly supportive of these moratoriums as any Republican.
Uh... other than producing and distributing it, you mean?
It was stylistically quite a bit different than most of Disney's traditional animation output, but it was most certainly a Disney film, anyway. Remember that this was during the period at which Disney is/was still desperately trying to find a way to revitalize its traditional cel animation department, and so you got a fair number of un-"Disney-like" films produced by Disney during this phase ("Atlantis," "Treasure Planet," "Home on the Range," even, arguably, "Lilo and Stitch"). In that context, "The Emperor's New Groove" is hardly unusual.
The 1950s were a really bad decade for comics, as publishers substantially scaled back their output, and then the publicy outcry over some percieved link between comics and juvenile deliquency that led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. All this is true, but the fact of the matter is that the situation had massive improved by the end of the decade.
DC led the resurgence of the market by reviving a number of its older, 1940s era properties. The first among these was the Flash, but that was followed, in short order, by others, like Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom, and so on (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were, of course, still around, being just about the only characters to survive through the "dry" years). By 1960, things were looking good enough for DC to revive the Justice Society of America, which had been its main superhero team back in the 1940s. Updated to feature the new characters, and retitled the Justice League of America, it premiered in 1960, and was an immediate hit, moving very quickly from occassional appearances in one of DC's "showcase" books (Brave and the Bold) to its own title.
The Fantastic Four, though quite successful, were latecomers to all of this. The traditional story goes that the publisher of Timely Comics, Martin Goodman, was playing a round of golf with Jack Liebowitz, DC's publisher. Liebowitz was bragging about the success of Justice League, and so Goodman's response was to immediately go to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who were on Timely's staff, and tell them to come up with Timely's own version of the JLA, changed just enough so as to avoid raising the ire of DC's lawyers.
Published under the new name of Marvel, Fantastic Four was the publisher's first big success since the 1940s, and propelled Lee and Kirby to the forefront of the genre. It allowed Timely/Marvel to start investing more effort into superhero comics, and paved the way for such titles as Spider-Man, the Hulk, and X-Men. So it was important, in the long view, but it did not save the industry. It was merely another entry into a comic book renaissance that was already well under way by that time.
Yeah, because then Real's music store will leap to the head of the online music market with its impressive collection of public domain jingles and amateur-recorded classical music.
How on earth is this post insightful? Even if we assume that Real was willing to use an unencumbered format, then what about the actual copyright holders, like the RIAA, who have made very clear that this sort of thing would be totally unacceptable? By the same token, why doesn't Apple sell unencumbered MP3s (or AACs, or whatever your particular poison is in this case) so that Linux users can play them without the hassle of messing around with Wine?
Let's keep some perspective on this whole thing, folks....
This is hardly an unknown bug. It's been plaguing Firefox releases for various people for as long as I can remember, and it even has an entry on Bugzilla (#217527). It is, however, a little unpredictable. I ran into the problem very rarely until upgrading to 0.9, when it started popping up every time. Other people have said 0.9 has improved things, though.
I eventually had to switch to the trunk build, which has incorporated a fix for it (although is more of a work-in-progress than the branch build, in general). For those who only encounter it rarely, or aren't willing to bother with the trunk builds, the most reliable way I've found of "fixing" the page is to quickly increase or decrease text size (CTRL++/-). Reloading doesn't always work.
*sigh* Let's assume, just as a thought exercise, the word "mp3" was being used in its (admittedly incorrect) "genericized" form to mean "any/all lossy encoded digital music file," and that the original poster wasn't actually suggesting that Apple just scoured Napster back in '99 to stock its music store. In other words, let's apply a modicum of reading comprehension to the whole exercise.
The point, as I interpreted it, was that the same songs that were being pirated from P2P outlets like Napster et al. are the ones that are being favored through legal online music stores like iTMS and Real. And that this seemed to put the kibosh on the recording industry's argument that piracy was a problem because it made it so that they couldn't "make sure the artists can still comfortably produce new songs."
The point is, five years later, the most popular songs are the largely the same as the most popular songs from way back when. Which seems to lend some credence to the idea that the monetary problems of groups like the RIAA have less to do with piracy, and more to do with a systematic failure of the industry to produce any new lasting hits. Because, if we follow through the original argument to its logical conclusion, the artists still must not be making enough money, as they still seem to be failing to produce much of lasting value.
The thing is, the vast majority of folks are still going to be hooking up their DVD players using standard A/V cables to standard definition television sets. Having surround sound capabilities, or progressive scane support is going to mean something to the true digiphiles out there, but not much to Joe Sixpack.
I'm not so sure, myself. On average, I don't think Doctor Who ever lagged more than two or three years behind the standard for television sci-fi in the United States, and, even then, tended to do so only for brief periods. The earliest seasons were pretty much on par for what you would expect in the early 1960s. By the late 1960s, Star Trek had raised the bar a little, but the show caught easily up by 1970, when it made the jump to color. Similarly, Graham Williams' run in the late 1970s was probably the most notoriously cheap in the history of the series, but Philip Hinchcliffe's before him, and John Nathan-Turner's after him, were just about on the same level. And the final two seasons or so were, IMO, actually better looking than the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation on almost every level.
The problem was inherently one of scope. Graham Williams and Douglas Adams, for instance, favored big space operas which were generally too expensive to do except on the cheap, whereas Philip Hinchcliffe tended to favor contemporary and/or period pieces, which the BBC could do very well indeed. Plus, especially towards the tail end of the series, after the episode counts of the seasons had been slashed, and there was more money to distribute to each individual episode, on the average the show did a fine job, IMO. Not spectacular, and not going to win any awards, but not the crapfest that most make it out to be.
Well, the situation is a bit different. I trust the BBC to interfere more than I would trust any American TV network, if only because their jobs are different. Fox reviving "The Simpsons" twenty years down the line would suck because, like any commercial network, they'd almost certainly have as much of an eye on making money off of the thing as they would in producing a good series. Since BBC TV isn't run on a for-profit basis, they have a better chance on actually focusing on making a great series. Which, of course, doesn't mean they'll know how to do that....
But, then again, I trust the writers and producers. They are long-time fans of the show, and all of them have done work for the franchise at some point, either as part of the range of novels, the audio dramas, or the TV special "Curse of Fatal Death." So, with some luck, they'll be able to turn out something that will work.
I'm hopeful that the Daleks will be handled well. Many (most) of the writers of the new series have experience writing for Doctor Who in some capacity, either for the novel range, or the series of audio dramas. And, in particular, Robert Shearman's audio play "Jubilee" is hands down my favorite handling of the Daleks ever. So I believe these guys can use the Daleks effectively. Whether or not they will, though, remains to be seen....
Tom Baker is still around, but not doing anything much of note, really, other than playing the part of a slightly crazy semi-recluse rather well. He had a brief part in the abysmally awful (yet oddly compelling, in an Ed Wood sort of way) "Dungeons and Dragons" a few years back as an elf.
"Genesis" and "Remembrance" both are generally considered to be the best of the post-1960s Dalek stories. The former more than the latter, though. But that's only eight stories out of a twenty year period, mind.
The Daleks tend to be only as good as the people writing for them. They're at their best when used as part of some sort of metaphorical purpose: Terry Nation's "Genesis of the Daleks" likened them to the Nazis, and drew heavy parallels between their creation and the rise of the Third Reich. Ben Aaronvitch's "Remembrance of the Daleks" did a similar trick against the backdrop of the civil rights movement of the 1960s to make a point about racism.
A similar problem faces a lot of Doctor Who monsters, though: the Cybermen suffered through almost all their post-1960s appearances as writers generally tended to disregard the whole risks-of-technology idea that was at their core of their creation. The Cybermen, in particular, rapidly degenerated into joke status through their supposed allergy to gold, a far cry from the humanity-once-removed creepiness of their first appearances.
Considering the amount of money/publicity the BBC is dumping into this project? It's potentially one of the biggest things BBC TV has done in years, and I would argue it matters as much as any entertainment news does to a site like Slashdot.
Although, to be fair, it certainly is also "stuff by/for nerds"....
By and large, the original series was not especially lacking in the FX department. It was generally on par with any science fiction show during its time, really. The show only managed to gain a reputation for being done "on the cheap" because of two basic reasons. First of which was that what was probably the single most famous season of the show (season 17, the season where Douglas Adams served as script editor) did have the tendency of being cheaper-looking than was probably healthy. This is also just about the only season that qualifies as being truly campy (thanks, in part, to the Adams connection). There were other moments, here and there, but, even at its worst, it's not "Rocky Horror," and by and large the camp value is overstated.
The other reason is that there was a bit of a delayed reaction at work in the way the show was recieved in North America. The earliest years of the show, from the early-to-mid 1960s, didn't reach the United States until the late 1970s at the earliest. Taken in the correct context, it's not bad. Certainly, it wouldn't be winning awards, but it's more than passable. By the standards of the late 1970s? Yes, it looks weak. But the show itself had long since moved beyond that, anyway.
Don't get me wrong: it's not overwhelming, and the strength of the series really never has lied with the special effects. But it's not the sub-"Plan 9 from Outer Space" mess that its reputation would lead one to believe. It holds its own fairly admirably with its contemporaries, keeping in mind that the series was ending just about the time when "Star Trek: the Next Generation" was beginning. And the first two seasons or so of that show look rather cheap, too.
The other thing is, it's was a very long-lived program, which had many different show-runners at various points in its history. Different producers/editors brought very different sensibilities into play. Depending on what time period and what producer you look at, you could easily come away believing the show was predominantly campy space opera, spy thriller, hard-edged military sci-fi, magical realist period drama, or hard science fiction, straight up. Which is, after all, part of the charm of the premise, and part of the reason why the show lasted twenty six seasons to begin with. Not to mention why it, as much, if not more, than Star Trek did, managed to persevere so long after its cancellation....
The linked article states "Previously, iPod would only play digitally protected songs that carry restrictions and were purchased from Apple's own iTunes music store."
This seems to be patently untrue, as it's hardly a state secret that the iPod can play un-DRMed songs perfectly well. I suppose I can simply be parsing the paragraph wrong, but they seem to refer to this again when they bring up the DMCA, specifically citing the provisions against "illegally copying software" (and not, as would make somewhat more sense, the reverse engineering angle).
It wouldn't be the first time a major news outlet got the technical details wrong, but this really completely misrepresents the nature of both Real's initial actions and Apple's reaction....
The BBC is a little bit messy, from a business perspective. BBC America is part of BBC Worldwide, which is the commercial wing of the organization, and is geared towards making a profit. Therefore, BBC America is like any other US cable television network.
The UK stations, on the other hand, are not commercial entities. They are funded by the licensing fee, and are therefore not geared towards making profit. They have certain responsibilities not shared by BBC Worldwide (such as appealing the broadest selection of tastes, not simply the fattest wallet), too.
BBC Worldwide exists to handle the commercial potential of BBC products, which puts them at something of an arm's length from the rest of the organization, but nonetheless still under the same umbrella.
That would annoy Windows users no end, as Explorer doesn't recognized "daisy-chained" extensions (i.e., it makes no distinction between "*.tar.gz" and "*.gz"). It's one of the more annoying things about Windows I've been wishing they would address since the Windows 95 days, and am fully expecting them to completely ignore forever....
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that you're equating the idea that all opinions have an equal right be voiced to the idea that all opinions are equally correct (or incorrect, as the case may be). To answer your question: of course factual accuracy matters. Acknowledging that errors (or malicious misinformation) can sneak in is not equivalent to denying that facts both exist and matter. It's a trade-off. The most that can be fairly derived from the philosophy behind Wikipedia is that the potential benefits of an open content encyclopedia outweigh the potential dangers.
The dynamic is a fairly simple one, really: the premise behind Wikipedia implies that there are advantages to public editing which are not available via traditional research sources. These benefits include rapid turn around, increased detail, and a breadth of coverage a source like Britannica could never hope to attain. Yes, the converse to that is that Wikipedia will almost certainly have a larger (if still comparatively small) number of your tinfoil-hat janitors who ocassionally muck things up. And successful use of Wikipedia requires that the user be aware of this fact. But that does not greatly reduce the overall value of Wikipedia as a reference source.
This is, of course, a difficult thing for people used to traditional encyclopedias to get used to. But traditional encyclopedias have their own set of protocols which would be equally uncomfortable were we not so used to using them. Generations of teachers and librarians have warned students away from using encyclopedias for serious, detailed reference work for exactly those reasons. A user needs to know how to use Britannica no less than that user needs to know how to use Wikipedia.
But, then again, it's not like Wikipedia doesn't have systems in place for handling situations like the one you outline, anyway. There's a veritable bible of proper contributor ettiquette, and, when that fails (as it ocassionally does, if never as much as one might fear) there are the mediation and arbitration committees. In a case where one presentation of facts is demonstrably wrong, provided the "expert" party can adequately prove his or her case (which they should be able to do, otherwise their so-called "expert" contributions are of little value to anyone, really...), there's much less of a problem than naysayers like to suggest.
Well, they do, after a fashion. It's called http://www.britannica.com/.
Seriously, though, there are plenty of encyclopedias out there which only experts have any hope of contributing to. These are, of course, invaluable resources. But they're not Wikipedia. The problem with segregating "expert opinion" from "everything else" on a project like Wikipedia is that you wind up with the worst of all worlds: the "expert" set doesn't have the breadth of "everything else" set, and the "everything else" set suffers from the absence of expert opinion.
That is certainly not the premise or philosophy behind Wikipedia. As an editorial showcase, Wikipedia is hardly well designed. The ability to edit articles (and, by extension, remove or change incorrect information) only makes sense if you accept that there is a difference between truth and falsehood.
I think criticism of Wikipedia generally tends to miss the fact that most contributors recognize that bad data can sneak in, and that it's impossible to ensure 100% reliability. The rationale for Wikipedia merely suggests that the "open" approach offers some benefits not available to traditional encyclopedias (specifically, the breadth of specialized, niche or quickly changing information).
As someone who is an "expert" in at least one field (MLS degree), I tend to think that most criticism of Wikipedia is a bit naive: it overlooks shortcomings of traditional reference sources (print encyclopedias, etc.) simply because most people are familiar with them. We know how to read Encyclopedia Britannica, we know what to expect, and we know what to look out for, even if we often do so unconsciously. Wikipedia is an entirely new approach, and most people are still approaching it as they would traditional sources. Once things settle down and people become used to the idiosyncracies of Wikipedia as they have to other sources, I think it will be recognized for what it is: a valuable reference source that does not replace traditional encyclopedias anymore than traditional encyclopedias replaced research lithographs.
(Not to suggest that there aren't things that can be done to tweak Wikipedia so that, in Mr. Sanger's words, "the general public can regard [it] as reliable." But I think that's really something quite different than the sort of radical departure most such suggestions invariably seem to take.)
I think the basic problem with all of these criticisms of Wikipedia's reliability, or "anti-elitism" is that they flatly miss the point. The very reason we're having these sorts of discussions now are because Wikipedia's original model and ethos have been effective. Yes, there are always problems and pitfalls along the way, but the point of the matter is that no one would be arguing about how badly Wikipedia needs a stricter editorial review process (or whatever) if it was a collection of a dozen odd incomplete articles that no one ever bothered to contribute to....
Wikipedia was built on the backs of the thousands of users who have contributed to it. Some of these contributors were bona fide academic experts in a specific field, others were just interest amateurs. But in both cases, they contributed because they could, and, most importantly, because the entire philosophy of the project not only allows for, but encourages, that sort of contribution. We've reached the point where we people can start to take Wikipedia seriously enough to ponder questions like the ones Mr. Sanger brings up.
Wikipedia is not anti-elitist. That's a downright silly allegation. It does not specially privilege "elites," but they are likewise no more discriminated against than anyone else. The problem Mr. Sanger is addressing is ultimately not how eliminate anti-elitism, but how to institute pro-elitism. Which is absolutely fine, if your goal is to produce a traditional encyclopedia the likes of Britannica. But to encourage a special privilege for experts conversely discourages the participation of non-experts: if you make it so that average users can no longer edit Wikipedia articles, or make it enough of a chore that they no longer want to, then the entire project isn't Wikipedia anymore. And what's worse is if you appropriate the work they've already contributed in the process. It's the functional equivalent of a software company hosting an open source project which then they turn around and close once it's progressed to a certain point.
But more than that, it's a denial of what's gotten Wikipedia to where it is now in the first place. Without the active participation of all users, expert or not, it's unlikely Wikipedia would have gotten very far to begin with. To change it into something it isn't (and never aspired to be) now is silly. To imply that the contributions of non-experts are no longer desired because otherwise Wikipedia will never occupy the same privileged position as Encyclopedia Britannica is misguided. Wikipedia is not Britannica. It does some things better than Britannica, and it does some things worse than Britannica. While some specific failings can be addressed whilst maintaining the core of the Wikipedia philosophy, the key is to do so without damaging that which Wikipedia does well.
I'm a long time Mozilla/Firefox user and supporter, and have used MSIE only infrequently for the past four or five years (basically on when I'm stuck using someone else's machine). So don't construe this as an attack on Firefox/a defense of Internet Explorer....
But Firefox has a couple of hurdles to overcome to supplant Microsoft in terms of browser share. Most users have been weened on IE, and are familiar with the various eccentricities of Microsoft's browser. Furthermore, it's already there, easy and ready to use. Firefox's small window of opportunity comes as a result of Microsoft's poor record on security concerns. The Microsoft FUD machine only needs to shed enough doubt on Firefox's touted security improvements to make Joe User decide that what he sees as a only a slight improvement in terms of security is offset by the familiarity of IE. The question isn't "Do I trust Firefox more than IE," it's "Is it worth messing around with Firefox when I'm already used to IE?"
Firefox is, IMO, easily the superior browser. But I'm already a convert. While I'm sure Microsoft would love to have me pick up IE again, what matters more to them is stopping my friends and family from flocking to Firefox at the expense of IE. And it's those people (still 80% of the market, at least) who are the target of this "is Firefox trustworthy?" talk.
I disagree with you about "Glass Elevator" not being as good as the original book. It was... different, to be sure, and it the format was such that I'm not sure it would translate particularly well into a movie (given that it was basically two stories loosely connected into one).
But it had, IMO, a premise just as interesting as the original, and some of the scariest moments of any book I read as a child (the Vermicious Knids still give me nightmares, on occassion). Actually, I'd really be more interested in seeing Burton's take on that book than the original, as its mixture of dark humor and horror seems to better fit his traditional style....
They have fixed it: they eliminated the damned thing from the trunk build back in June. As for why this fix never got integrated into the branch build in time for the 1.0 release... who knows. Stupidity, I guess.
In the meantime, there's this extension which takes care of the problem pretty well.
Well, yeah. Disney just shut down its traditional animation studio (though it wasn't directly related to "Emperor's New Groove," since that came out years before the shutdown...). But my understand was that it was less to do with trying to spite Eisner, and more to do with Eisner trying to spite Roy Disney, who had been one of the strongest holdouts for traditional animation in the company, and whom had a rather public falling-out with Eisner a few months back....
Why wouldn't it? It seems that it's an issue of states' rights, which is supposed to be the particular forte of the Republican party, after all. This ban, if anything, is limiting the rights of states to tax and/or regulate within their borders.
:-) Also as food for thought, Bill Clinton came out in support of various bans of internet taxation while he was in office.
And, of course, it's worth pointing out that both the permanent moratorium in the House, and the temporary moratorium in the Senate, are bipartisan measures. Indeed, the article in question features a quote from a congressional Democrat support (wait for it...) the permanent ban. Those darned tax'n'spend Democrats, trying to permanently ban a form of taxation....
To my knowledge, there's never been much of a party-line consensus on the subject: in general, representatives from tech-heavy districts support these sorts of bans, because they see it as damaging to their regional economies. Given that many of these tech havens are in major cities, which tend, generally, to swing blue, Democrats have been just as strongly supportive of these moratoriums as any Republican.
Uh... other than producing and distributing it, you mean?
It was stylistically quite a bit different than most of Disney's traditional animation output, but it was most certainly a Disney film, anyway. Remember that this was during the period at which Disney is/was still desperately trying to find a way to revitalize its traditional cel animation department, and so you got a fair number of un-"Disney-like" films produced by Disney during this phase ("Atlantis," "Treasure Planet," "Home on the Range," even, arguably, "Lilo and Stitch"). In that context, "The Emperor's New Groove" is hardly unusual.
Erm, no. Not really.
The 1950s were a really bad decade for comics, as publishers substantially scaled back their output, and then the publicy outcry over some percieved link between comics and juvenile deliquency that led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. All this is true, but the fact of the matter is that the situation had massive improved by the end of the decade.
DC led the resurgence of the market by reviving a number of its older, 1940s era properties. The first among these was the Flash, but that was followed, in short order, by others, like Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom, and so on (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were, of course, still around, being just about the only characters to survive through the "dry" years). By 1960, things were looking good enough for DC to revive the Justice Society of America, which had been its main superhero team back in the 1940s. Updated to feature the new characters, and retitled the Justice League of America, it premiered in 1960, and was an immediate hit, moving very quickly from occassional appearances in one of DC's "showcase" books (Brave and the Bold) to its own title.
The Fantastic Four, though quite successful, were latecomers to all of this. The traditional story goes that the publisher of Timely Comics, Martin Goodman, was playing a round of golf with Jack Liebowitz, DC's publisher. Liebowitz was bragging about the success of Justice League, and so Goodman's response was to immediately go to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who were on Timely's staff, and tell them to come up with Timely's own version of the JLA, changed just enough so as to avoid raising the ire of DC's lawyers.
Published under the new name of Marvel, Fantastic Four was the publisher's first big success since the 1940s, and propelled Lee and Kirby to the forefront of the genre. It allowed Timely/Marvel to start investing more effort into superhero comics, and paved the way for such titles as Spider-Man, the Hulk, and X-Men. So it was important, in the long view, but it did not save the industry. It was merely another entry into a comic book renaissance that was already well under way by that time.
Yeah, because then Real's music store will leap to the head of the online music market with its impressive collection of public domain jingles and amateur-recorded classical music.
How on earth is this post insightful? Even if we assume that Real was willing to use an unencumbered format, then what about the actual copyright holders, like the RIAA, who have made very clear that this sort of thing would be totally unacceptable? By the same token, why doesn't Apple sell unencumbered MP3s (or AACs, or whatever your particular poison is in this case) so that Linux users can play them without the hassle of messing around with Wine?
Let's keep some perspective on this whole thing, folks....
This is hardly an unknown bug. It's been plaguing Firefox releases for various people for as long as I can remember, and it even has an entry on Bugzilla (#217527). It is, however, a little unpredictable. I ran into the problem very rarely until upgrading to 0.9, when it started popping up every time. Other people have said 0.9 has improved things, though.
I eventually had to switch to the trunk build, which has incorporated a fix for it (although is more of a work-in-progress than the branch build, in general). For those who only encounter it rarely, or aren't willing to bother with the trunk builds, the most reliable way I've found of "fixing" the page is to quickly increase or decrease text size (CTRL++/-). Reloading doesn't always work.
*sigh* Let's assume, just as a thought exercise, the word "mp3" was being used in its (admittedly incorrect) "genericized" form to mean "any/all lossy encoded digital music file," and that the original poster wasn't actually suggesting that Apple just scoured Napster back in '99 to stock its music store. In other words, let's apply a modicum of reading comprehension to the whole exercise.
The point, as I interpreted it, was that the same songs that were being pirated from P2P outlets like Napster et al. are the ones that are being favored through legal online music stores like iTMS and Real. And that this seemed to put the kibosh on the recording industry's argument that piracy was a problem because it made it so that they couldn't "make sure the artists can still comfortably produce new songs."
The point is, five years later, the most popular songs are the largely the same as the most popular songs from way back when. Which seems to lend some credence to the idea that the monetary problems of groups like the RIAA have less to do with piracy, and more to do with a systematic failure of the industry to produce any new lasting hits. Because, if we follow through the original argument to its logical conclusion, the artists still must not be making enough money, as they still seem to be failing to produce much of lasting value.
The thing is, the vast majority of folks are still going to be hooking up their DVD players using standard A/V cables to standard definition television sets. Having surround sound capabilities, or progressive scane support is going to mean something to the true digiphiles out there, but not much to Joe Sixpack.
I'm not so sure, myself. On average, I don't think Doctor Who ever lagged more than two or three years behind the standard for television sci-fi in the United States, and, even then, tended to do so only for brief periods. The earliest seasons were pretty much on par for what you would expect in the early 1960s. By the late 1960s, Star Trek had raised the bar a little, but the show caught easily up by 1970, when it made the jump to color. Similarly, Graham Williams' run in the late 1970s was probably the most notoriously cheap in the history of the series, but Philip Hinchcliffe's before him, and John Nathan-Turner's after him, were just about on the same level. And the final two seasons or so were, IMO, actually better looking than the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation on almost every level.
The problem was inherently one of scope. Graham Williams and Douglas Adams, for instance, favored big space operas which were generally too expensive to do except on the cheap, whereas Philip Hinchcliffe tended to favor contemporary and/or period pieces, which the BBC could do very well indeed. Plus, especially towards the tail end of the series, after the episode counts of the seasons had been slashed, and there was more money to distribute to each individual episode, on the average the show did a fine job, IMO. Not spectacular, and not going to win any awards, but not the crapfest that most make it out to be.
Well, the situation is a bit different. I trust the BBC to interfere more than I would trust any American TV network, if only because their jobs are different. Fox reviving "The Simpsons" twenty years down the line would suck because, like any commercial network, they'd almost certainly have as much of an eye on making money off of the thing as they would in producing a good series. Since BBC TV isn't run on a for-profit basis, they have a better chance on actually focusing on making a great series. Which, of course, doesn't mean they'll know how to do that....
But, then again, I trust the writers and producers. They are long-time fans of the show, and all of them have done work for the franchise at some point, either as part of the range of novels, the audio dramas, or the TV special "Curse of Fatal Death." So, with some luck, they'll be able to turn out something that will work.
I'm hopeful that the Daleks will be handled well. Many (most) of the writers of the new series have experience writing for Doctor Who in some capacity, either for the novel range, or the series of audio dramas. And, in particular, Robert Shearman's audio play "Jubilee" is hands down my favorite handling of the Daleks ever. So I believe these guys can use the Daleks effectively. Whether or not they will, though, remains to be seen....
Tom Baker is still around, but not doing anything much of note, really, other than playing the part of a slightly crazy semi-recluse rather well. He had a brief part in the abysmally awful (yet oddly compelling, in an Ed Wood sort of way) "Dungeons and Dragons" a few years back as an elf.
"Genesis" and "Remembrance" both are generally considered to be the best of the post-1960s Dalek stories. The former more than the latter, though. But that's only eight stories out of a twenty year period, mind.
The Daleks tend to be only as good as the people writing for them. They're at their best when used as part of some sort of metaphorical purpose: Terry Nation's "Genesis of the Daleks" likened them to the Nazis, and drew heavy parallels between their creation and the rise of the Third Reich. Ben Aaronvitch's "Remembrance of the Daleks" did a similar trick against the backdrop of the civil rights movement of the 1960s to make a point about racism.
A similar problem faces a lot of Doctor Who monsters, though: the Cybermen suffered through almost all their post-1960s appearances as writers generally tended to disregard the whole risks-of-technology idea that was at their core of their creation. The Cybermen, in particular, rapidly degenerated into joke status through their supposed allergy to gold, a far cry from the humanity-once-removed creepiness of their first appearances.
Considering the amount of money/publicity the BBC is dumping into this project? It's potentially one of the biggest things BBC TV has done in years, and I would argue it matters as much as any entertainment news does to a site like Slashdot.
Although, to be fair, it certainly is also "stuff by/for nerds"....
By and large, the original series was not especially lacking in the FX department. It was generally on par with any science fiction show during its time, really. The show only managed to gain a reputation for being done "on the cheap" because of two basic reasons. First of which was that what was probably the single most famous season of the show (season 17, the season where Douglas Adams served as script editor) did have the tendency of being cheaper-looking than was probably healthy. This is also just about the only season that qualifies as being truly campy (thanks, in part, to the Adams connection). There were other moments, here and there, but, even at its worst, it's not "Rocky Horror," and by and large the camp value is overstated.
The other reason is that there was a bit of a delayed reaction at work in the way the show was recieved in North America. The earliest years of the show, from the early-to-mid 1960s, didn't reach the United States until the late 1970s at the earliest. Taken in the correct context, it's not bad. Certainly, it wouldn't be winning awards, but it's more than passable. By the standards of the late 1970s? Yes, it looks weak. But the show itself had long since moved beyond that, anyway.
Don't get me wrong: it's not overwhelming, and the strength of the series really never has lied with the special effects. But it's not the sub-"Plan 9 from Outer Space" mess that its reputation would lead one to believe. It holds its own fairly admirably with its contemporaries, keeping in mind that the series was ending just about the time when "Star Trek: the Next Generation" was beginning. And the first two seasons or so of that show look rather cheap, too.
The other thing is, it's was a very long-lived program, which had many different show-runners at various points in its history. Different producers/editors brought very different sensibilities into play. Depending on what time period and what producer you look at, you could easily come away believing the show was predominantly campy space opera, spy thriller, hard-edged military sci-fi, magical realist period drama, or hard science fiction, straight up. Which is, after all, part of the charm of the premise, and part of the reason why the show lasted twenty six seasons to begin with. Not to mention why it, as much, if not more, than Star Trek did, managed to persevere so long after its cancellation....
The linked article states "Previously, iPod would only play digitally protected songs that carry restrictions and were purchased from Apple's own iTunes music store."
This seems to be patently untrue, as it's hardly a state secret that the iPod can play un-DRMed songs perfectly well. I suppose I can simply be parsing the paragraph wrong, but they seem to refer to this again when they bring up the DMCA, specifically citing the provisions against "illegally copying software" (and not, as would make somewhat more sense, the reverse engineering angle).
It wouldn't be the first time a major news outlet got the technical details wrong, but this really completely misrepresents the nature of both Real's initial actions and Apple's reaction....
The BBC is a little bit messy, from a business perspective. BBC America is part of BBC Worldwide, which is the commercial wing of the organization, and is geared towards making a profit. Therefore, BBC America is like any other US cable television network.
The UK stations, on the other hand, are not commercial entities. They are funded by the licensing fee, and are therefore not geared towards making profit. They have certain responsibilities not shared by BBC Worldwide (such as appealing the broadest selection of tastes, not simply the fattest wallet), too.
BBC Worldwide exists to handle the commercial potential of BBC products, which puts them at something of an arm's length from the rest of the organization, but nonetheless still under the same umbrella.
That would annoy Windows users no end, as Explorer doesn't recognized "daisy-chained" extensions (i.e., it makes no distinction between "*.tar.gz" and "*.gz"). It's one of the more annoying things about Windows I've been wishing they would address since the Windows 95 days, and am fully expecting them to completely ignore forever....