Agreed. Much like the "blogosphere," twitter is the kind of thing that is OMFG WORLD CHANGING.... but only to its users.
It's great that the service is there and all, but like facebook, myspace, et al, I really wish people would stop blithering about how INSANELY GREAT it is.
A web gui for the equivalent of an IRC or AIM/away message is about as world-changing as a gui for a MUD. Sure, at least one is successful... but I don't do MUDs or MMOs, so how has it changed my life, aside from a few of my friends disappearing for months whenever a new expansion is released?
That said, a pointless-to-me-anyway service that people I otherwise respect can't shut up about is being crapflooded? Awesome!
nearly every article to which I tried to contribute had a band of "campers" hanging around it, who were much more interested in maintaining their own version of the truth via the preferential enforcement of technicalities in Wikipedia's rules, than they were in the truth content of said articles
Clearly Wikipedia is an MMO for people who lack the hardware for World of Warcraft.
Oh! The writer couldn't be farther from truth. 98.3% of users are inactive because rest of the 1.7% users have formed a self-serving "community", and most people who are contributing in their spare time don't have the energy and will to fight their way inside this community.
That's been my experience. That 1.7% is worse than the worst high school or goth clique you've ever encountered. "Unreasonable" would be a charitable description.
Beyond a few anonymous edits - readily fixable spelling errors, mostly - I don't bother to contribute. More often than not whatever I contributed isn't there when I come back - either because it isn't "notable" or because somebody else with more time and less on their plate decided to reword the entry.
The issue there in my experience is the same problem we have with US politics - too many people who care far too much about their own interpretation of the notability policy are in positions of influence. We're talking the kind of people who live on wikipedia the same way some of us live on/. or IRC or WoW or AIM.
It doesn't matter if we're right. What matters to them is we don't agree with them. So they'll stomp on us and shit on us and delete entries anyway, out of spite or some twisted logic that what was originally founded as a public resource is somehow divinely theirs.
The wikipedia editors that push this crap are the internet equivalent of The Religious Right in american politics, and are about as open to reason. The only way to change the situation is to effectively usurp or remove the ruling influence.
A few years ago (back when I only had a couple of chapters done), a fan of my webcomic contacted me and told me he wanted to make a wikipedia entry for it. I said "sure!" and gave him some fun facts to run with. He wrote the entry and posted it.
Since I:
(a) can't afford to advertise (b) don't want ads on my own site (c) don't "get out much," socially speaking (d) am telling a ridiculously obtuse story that has little or none of the usual tropes that auto-generate an audience
- I wasn't "out there" in the community, but more importantly -
(e) had a big fat DENY ALL robots.txt that prevented google et al from scraping my site...*
A couple of asshole admins decided the comic wasn't "noteable" enough and binned the entry. It limped over to comixpedia where it hasn't been updated (or, as far as I know, even read) since. I've gotten maybe one or two hits from it in the past two years.
In the meantime, pretty much every other webcomic you can possibly think of has a wikipedia entry varying from nicely detailed to ridiculously overdone.
Which I suppose is more of a commentary on the social nature of the internet than it is anything else - it isn't enough for a thing to exist. Somebody has to be out there promulgating it, carving out a niche for it, building a community around it, etceteras - or it effectively doesn't exist.
While I think the "NOTHING LINKS TO IT IT'S NOT NOTEABLE DELETE" policy held by some of the more strong-willed editors is bull, and while that's kept me from contributing edits - or even from being a real piss-ass and re-posting the entry for my comic - I still think the interweb is better with wikipedia than without it.
The one change I'd like to see? As long as the damned domain resolves and there's content there, then a website exists and a wikipedia entry about it is frigging valid. Who cares if it's "notable?"
I mean, really. A subnotebook is smaller and lighter than a "standard issue" laptop - my 12" powerbook G4 would have been a great example of this a few years ago. Of course, "netbooks" are typically smaller than that - even smaller than the Apple Duo! - but they''re still ultimately Bonsai Laptops and in some configurations can be used for Actual Work.*
They're just wee. "netbook" to me has negative connotations - it rings up an image of a Sun Ray - a piece of hardware that's completely, entirely useless (too light to be a doorstop) without a network connection, from which is got everything. Including the OS.
Ahead of its time, the way things are going!
* I mean the kind of stuff that still drives Macbook Pro sales. Photoshop, Final Cut, etceteras. Yes, I know that a lot of Actual Work is done with emacs but you don't need processors, batteries, and video chipsets that were released three days ago to run emacs at useable speeds.
I've never worked for google (and probably never would, even if I had the chance), but from having hung out quite a bit with someone who HAS... well, long story short, he quit because he found a job that paid him more than GOOG can to do what it is he's awesome at.
From what I've read - mostly on/., admittedly - Apple is much the same way. The company "price premium" carries over into employee salaries.
That said, it smells to me like GOOG is indirectly trying to increase Android market share while simultaneously cutting costs. I'm sure SOME executive is ejaculating all over a nice fat bonus check as I'm typing this...
Can anyone think of another actress who's done this much for science fiction?
We're not talking a role here - we're talking Lifetime Achievement.
Majel Barrett isn't just an icon - she's AWESOME. I personally can't think of another acting talent whose passing has diminished the genre to such a degree.
No matter how you choose to spin it, this woman has done a LOT for science fiction, and her passing deserves to be marked.
* Dan sheds a tear for the Voice Of Star Trek, Now Silenced.
With networks - CBC, sci-fi, BBC America's ass-raping of oldschool Doctor Who, etceteras - acting like this..... is it any wonder that the computer-savvy types are getting their TV through bittorrent?
Seriously. First Run, shortly after it airs, no commercials, usually 480i but often 720p, UNEDITED Show You Like, down your pipe........ or wait months or even YEARS to get the same thing, often censored, heavily edited, or in this case, missing HUGE CHUNKS?
Does the CBC really think anyone's going to watch their shat-upon Who when better, more complete alternatives are available?
In this day and age, you'd think second-run countries (Canada, USA, Australia, etc) would be jamming in out-takes or following up an episode with the accompanying Doctor Who Confidential in order to give their audience more bang-for-the-buck than they can get through other means.
Alas.
Imagine my reaction - I saw the classic Doctor Who episode Robot on BBCA and Robots of Death on PBS... I downloaded both years later and - SHOCK! - HOLY CRAP! - Robot was nearly DOUBLE the length and SO MUCH BETTER.... and Robots of Death... well, the local PBS affiliate had seen fit to effectively disembowel it.
How can i possibly support such corporations, when the BBC gives me the whole product ?
Dude. Reality check. Frank Miller is alive. The living need money, and movies pay a lot better than comics.
And Will Eisner is dead. As I'm sure Bryan Herbert would tell you, it doesn't matter what the dead may have wanted done with their work. The only thing that matters is the money to be made from their creative corpse.
Me, I enjoy his linework and composition*.... I just really, REALLY wish he'd come out of the damned closet with his blatant bondage fetish.
I'm down with excessive violence... what I'm tired of is the boring-ass no-purpose "pornography of violence" that's fills out the runtime of a film more than it fleshes out the story.**
* There are comics I read for Story (Appleseed, The Invisibles, Transmetropolitan, Watchmen, etc) and then there are comics I buy strictly for the visuals (some of Miller's stuff, Battle Angel Alita, etc).
** Take, for example, Titus's stint in the Arena in HBO's Rome and compare the emotional impact of that scene with the hum-drum stylized slashfest of 300. Both are entertaining, but Rome offers up an emotional punch and very satisfying character development in addition to the ultraviolence, whereas the most you'll feel from 300 is the same kind of HELL YEAH! sports fans bellow after their team scores a touchdown.
Agreed. The pitch as I understand it sounds like a show that would really rake it in on Lifetime or maybe AMC. Any net that doesn't "specialize" in Sci-Fi.
(of course, SciFi runs wrestling, so who knows what they're thinking...)
However, Moore has no idea how to use drama and discovery over a long arc.
The best example of this is the "eye of jupiter" and the "final five" popping up OUT OF NOWHERE in Season Three, and the series from that point forward depending completely on those events. While the "models of cylons" bit is certainly foreshadowed right from the get-go, the way bits of Holy Text have a tendency to appear late in the game with no foreshadowing to speak of is a pretty clear indicator that the writers are making it up as they go along.
People talk about how great the story of the new BSG is - and by and large, they aren't people who've watched Babylon 5. B5 had serious foreshadowing, buildup, and laying-the-groundwork scenes (and entire episodes) straight out of the gate. By the middle of season 2 the show was beginning to seriously build on itself and by season 3 it was a fantastic piece of storytelling that wasn't pulling Story Defining MacGuffins out of its ass with no prior context.
BSG is a decent, fairly entertaining (and at times tedious and infuriating) show - one that obviously wasn't outlined in detail before shooting began.
Sure, they CALL them seasons, but if you think about it what we're really getting are UK-length series* of the show, mislabeled.
Think about it.
Series 1 : 13 episodes, Jan-April 2005
Series 2 : 10 episodes, July-September 2005
Series 3 : 10 episodes, Jan-March 2006 # called "season 2.5" for the DVDs and considered to be "second half" of season 2.
Series 4 : 20 episodes, October 2006 - January 2007 # called "season 3," the only time the new BSG has run in anything approximating a traditional TV "season" form.
Series 5 : 10 episodes, April-June 2008 # called "the first half of season 4"
Series 6 : 10 episodes, January-?? 2009 # called "the second half of season 4"
* UK TV shows don't run in seasons, they run in "series" (eg series 1, series 2, etc. as listed above), typically of 1-10 episodes... though for British comedies, 4-6 episodes is considered a "series" - compare to the US "season," which typically consists of 18-22 episodes. Imagine waiting 46 weeks to get your weekly dose of Red Dwarf (or No Heroics or The IT Crowd or whatever).... it kinda makes the several-month gap between BSG series look positively brief.
io9 has been reporting on Caprica since at least January, if not earlier. The real news here is that SciFi's ordered up a full season, even though it hasn't aired the pilot yet.
This could be a rash decision on their part - the series pitch is loudly devoid of anything that's made the rebooted series interesting (namely, spaceships and explosions), instead loudly billing itself as Dynasty in spaaaaaace.
I don't know about you, but my gut reaction to this is a bored "next!"
If the story gets over its pretentious pretext and goes somewhere interesting - like, say... the first Human/Cylon war, then I'm in. Otherwise... what's to distinguish it from the umpty other dramas out there, aside from (one would hope) an sfx budget?
Surely 300 years in the future touchscreens will be old, proven technology
... while manual buttons, levers, and switches will be older and even more proven.
And tactile.
On a smoke-filled bridge, it helps if you can feel that you're pulling the lever for the fire control system, as opposed to having accidentally fumbled your way into the other fire control system and launched a torpedo at your tailpipe.
LCARS may be pretty, but if you can't actually see what you're doing, it's completely useless. Manual controls, you can still feel around for what you need with one hand while you're fumbling around for your eyeballs with the other.
My private theory also covers a good number of "holodeck episodes," which is one of the things I dislike about TNG and VOY (better handled in DS9 to a point but still there - maybe there's something about Starfleet-issue holodecks and hulls that sucks in the horrible as well as the "chronitons").
Straight up : Earth-centric time travel and holodecks are an out for the writers. They can write anything they want, not have to piss around brushing up on details of the universe, etc, plug the Trek cast into it and GO!. Got what you think is a good Sherlock Holmes story you can't sell? Swap him out for Data, change a few details, instant episode. Want to parody Flash Gordon, but can't get a network interested? Holodeck episode. Think Star Trek IV would have been better with fewer whales and more Jewish comediennes? Rewrite, replace the TOS crew with the VOY crew. Two parter!
Then there's the ENT temporal cold war. Thinking about it just now made me throw up a little in my mouth.
Time travel - or the holodeck - lets a writer forego exploring the Trek universe in favor of a "reboot switch" episode, allowing them to focus on whatever it is they're actually interested in, do Big Crazy Things without having to worry about the consequences.... and oh yeah, kill the Borg with a force field shaped like a tommy gun,* when the Borg can walk through any other force field on the ship.
Talk about layers upon layers of escapism.
Oh, and let's not forget budgets. It's cheaper to throw in some time travel (or holodeck program or whatever) and go do a location shoot than it is to build sets.
* I know the whole point of that scene was Picard working through some Locutus shit but please.:P
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Agreed. Much like the "blogosphere," twitter is the kind of thing that is OMFG WORLD CHANGING.... but only to its users.
It's great that the service is there and all, but like facebook, myspace, et al, I really wish people would stop blithering about how INSANELY GREAT it is.
A web gui for the equivalent of an IRC or AIM /away message is about as world-changing as a gui for a MUD. Sure, at least one is successful... but I don't do MUDs or MMOs, so how has it changed my life, aside from a few of my friends disappearing for months whenever a new expansion is released?
That said, a pointless-to-me-anyway service that people I otherwise respect can't shut up about is being crapflooded? Awesome!
You make a very good point that "power within the system" is the currency that makes Wikipedia work.
Naturally, power corrupts... and as a result what we have is more of a Soviet form of "communism" than the Marxist ideal.
... the man with the bog roll is king.
Which would be why some of the people who've tasked themselves with cleaning up the mess have developed such an overblown sense of entitlement.
Clearly Wikipedia is an MMO for people who lack the hardware for World of Warcraft.
That's been my experience. That 1.7% is worse than the worst high school or goth clique you've ever encountered. "Unreasonable" would be a charitable description.
Beyond a few anonymous edits - readily fixable spelling errors, mostly - I don't bother to contribute. More often than not whatever I contributed isn't there when I come back - either because it isn't "notable" or because somebody else with more time and less on their plate decided to reword the entry.
The issue there in my experience is the same problem we have with US politics - too many people who care far too much about their own interpretation of the notability policy are in positions of influence. We're talking the kind of people who live on wikipedia the same way some of us live on /. or IRC or WoW or AIM.
It doesn't matter if we're right. What matters to them is we don't agree with them. So they'll stomp on us and shit on us and delete entries anyway, out of spite or some twisted logic that what was originally founded as a public resource is somehow divinely theirs.
The wikipedia editors that push this crap are the internet equivalent of The Religious Right in american politics, and are about as open to reason. The only way to change the situation is to effectively usurp or remove the ruling influence.
Agreed.
A few years ago (back when I only had a couple of chapters done), a fan of my webcomic contacted me and told me he wanted to make a wikipedia entry for it. I said "sure!" and gave him some fun facts to run with. He wrote the entry and posted it.
Since I:
(a) can't afford to advertise
(b) don't want ads on my own site
(c) don't "get out much," socially speaking
(d) am telling a ridiculously obtuse story that has little or none of the usual tropes that auto-generate an audience
- I wasn't "out there" in the community, but more importantly -
(e) had a big fat DENY ALL robots.txt that prevented google et al from scraping my site...*
A couple of asshole admins decided the comic wasn't "noteable" enough and binned the entry. It limped over to comixpedia where it hasn't been updated (or, as far as I know, even read) since. I've gotten maybe one or two hits from it in the past two years.
In the meantime, pretty much every other webcomic you can possibly think of has a wikipedia entry varying from nicely detailed to ridiculously overdone.
Which I suppose is more of a commentary on the social nature of the internet than it is anything else - it isn't enough for a thing to exist. Somebody has to be out there promulgating it, carving out a niche for it, building a community around it, etceteras - or it effectively doesn't exist.
While I think the "NOTHING LINKS TO IT IT'S NOT NOTEABLE DELETE" policy held by some of the more strong-willed editors is bull, and while that's kept me from contributing edits - or even from being a real piss-ass and re-posting the entry for my comic - I still think the interweb is better with wikipedia than without it.
The one change I'd like to see? As long as the damned domain resolves and there's content there, then a website exists and a wikipedia entry about it is frigging valid. Who cares if it's "notable?"
* Long since removed, to some effect.
Agreed, and it certainly explains a lot.
Kind of like the difference between "only 19.95!" and "only 20!"
As a corollary, this is exactly why the RIAA is suing the hell out of 75 year old blind armless grandmothers and not, say... Harvard.
Combine some Little Guy crushing with a tech-unsavvy judge in the jurisdiction of your choosing and WHAMMO!. Profit.
I mean, really. A subnotebook is smaller and lighter than a "standard issue" laptop - my 12" powerbook G4 would have been a great example of this a few years ago. Of course, "netbooks" are typically smaller than that - even smaller than the Apple Duo! - but they''re still ultimately Bonsai Laptops and in some configurations can be used for Actual Work.*
They're just wee. "netbook" to me has negative connotations - it rings up an image of a Sun Ray - a piece of hardware that's completely, entirely useless (too light to be a doorstop) without a network connection, from which is got everything. Including the OS.
Ahead of its time, the way things are going!
* I mean the kind of stuff that still drives Macbook Pro sales. Photoshop, Final Cut, etceteras. Yes, I know that a lot of Actual Work is done with emacs but you don't need processors, batteries, and video chipsets that were released three days ago to run emacs at useable speeds.
... that Google pays LESS than their competitors.
I've never worked for google (and probably never would, even if I had the chance), but from having hung out quite a bit with someone who HAS... well, long story short, he quit because he found a job that paid him more than GOOG can to do what it is he's awesome at.
From what I've read - mostly on /., admittedly - Apple is much the same way. The company "price premium" carries over into employee salaries.
That said, it smells to me like GOOG is indirectly trying to increase Android market share while simultaneously cutting costs. I'm sure SOME executive is ejaculating all over a nice fat bonus check as I'm typing this...
Can anyone think of another actress who's done this much for science fiction?
We're not talking a role here - we're talking Lifetime Achievement.
Majel Barrett isn't just an icon - she's AWESOME. I personally can't think of another acting talent whose passing has diminished the genre to such a degree.
No matter how you choose to spin it, this woman has done a LOT for science fiction, and her passing deserves to be marked.
* Dan sheds a tear for the Voice Of Star Trek, Now Silenced.
Especially if I ever need to recover one of my linux box's drives from a Mac.
But really, all I want for christmas is NTFS write support.
With networks - CBC, sci-fi, BBC America's ass-raping of oldschool Doctor Who, etceteras - acting like this..... is it any wonder that the computer-savvy types are getting their TV through bittorrent?
Seriously. First Run, shortly after it airs, no commercials, usually 480i but often 720p, UNEDITED Show You Like, down your pipe........ or wait months or even YEARS to get the same thing, often censored, heavily edited, or in this case, missing HUGE CHUNKS?
Does the CBC really think anyone's going to watch their shat-upon Who when better, more complete alternatives are available?
In this day and age, you'd think second-run countries (Canada, USA, Australia, etc) would be jamming in out-takes or following up an episode with the accompanying Doctor Who Confidential in order to give their audience more bang-for-the-buck than they can get through other means.
Alas.
Imagine my reaction - I saw the classic Doctor Who episode Robot on BBCA and Robots of Death on PBS... I downloaded both years later and - SHOCK! - HOLY CRAP! - Robot was nearly DOUBLE the length and SO MUCH BETTER.... and Robots of Death... well, the local PBS affiliate had seen fit to effectively disembowel it.
How can i possibly support such corporations, when the BBC gives me the whole product ?
Dude. Reality check. Frank Miller is alive. The living need money, and movies pay a lot better than comics.
And Will Eisner is dead. As I'm sure Bryan Herbert would tell you, it doesn't matter what the dead may have wanted done with their work. The only thing that matters is the money to be made from their creative corpse.
Me, I enjoy his linework and composition*.... I just really, REALLY wish he'd come out of the damned closet with his blatant bondage fetish.
I'm down with excessive violence... what I'm tired of is the boring-ass no-purpose "pornography of violence" that's fills out the runtime of a film more than it fleshes out the story.**
* There are comics I read for Story (Appleseed, The Invisibles, Transmetropolitan, Watchmen, etc) and then there are comics I buy strictly for the visuals (some of Miller's stuff, Battle Angel Alita, etc).
** Take, for example, Titus's stint in the Arena in HBO's Rome and compare the emotional impact of that scene with the hum-drum stylized slashfest of 300. Both are entertaining, but Rome offers up an emotional punch and very satisfying character development in addition to the ultraviolence, whereas the most you'll feel from 300 is the same kind of HELL YEAH! sports fans bellow after their team scores a touchdown.
Oh, we could only wish!
Agreed. The pitch as I understand it sounds like a show that would really rake it in on Lifetime or maybe AMC. Any net that doesn't "specialize" in Sci-Fi.
(of course, SciFi runs wrestling, so who knows what they're thinking...)
The best example of this is the "eye of jupiter" and the "final five" popping up OUT OF NOWHERE in Season Three, and the series from that point forward depending completely on those events. While the "models of cylons" bit is certainly foreshadowed right from the get-go, the way bits of Holy Text have a tendency to appear late in the game with no foreshadowing to speak of is a pretty clear indicator that the writers are making it up as they go along.
People talk about how great the story of the new BSG is - and by and large, they aren't people who've watched Babylon 5. B5 had serious foreshadowing, buildup, and laying-the-groundwork scenes (and entire episodes) straight out of the gate. By the middle of season 2 the show was beginning to seriously build on itself and by season 3 it was a fantastic piece of storytelling that wasn't pulling Story Defining MacGuffins out of its ass with no prior context.
BSG is a decent, fairly entertaining (and at times tedious and infuriating) show - one that obviously wasn't outlined in detail before shooting began.
It would, but for me, "family drama" is just a shorter way of saying "42 minutes of filler."
Sure, they CALL them seasons, but if you think about it what we're really getting are UK-length series* of the show, mislabeled.
Think about it.
Series 1 : 13 episodes, Jan-April 2005
Series 2 : 10 episodes, July-September 2005
Series 3 : 10 episodes, Jan-March 2006 # called "season 2.5" for the DVDs and considered to be "second half" of season 2.
Series 4 : 20 episodes, October 2006 - January 2007 # called "season 3," the only time the new BSG has run in anything approximating a traditional TV "season" form.
Series 5 : 10 episodes, April-June 2008 # called "the first half of season 4"
Series 6 : 10 episodes, January-?? 2009 # called "the second half of season 4"
* UK TV shows don't run in seasons, they run in "series" (eg series 1, series 2, etc. as listed above), typically of 1-10 episodes... though for British comedies, 4-6 episodes is considered a "series" - compare to the US "season," which typically consists of 18-22 episodes. Imagine waiting 46 weeks to get your weekly dose of Red Dwarf (or No Heroics or The IT Crowd or whatever).... it kinda makes the several-month gap between BSG series look positively brief.
io9 has been reporting on Caprica since at least January, if not earlier. The real news here is that SciFi's ordered up a full season, even though it hasn't aired the pilot yet.
This could be a rash decision on their part - the series pitch is loudly devoid of anything that's made the rebooted series interesting (namely, spaceships and explosions), instead loudly billing itself as Dynasty in spaaaaaace.
I don't know about you, but my gut reaction to this is a bored "next!"
If the story gets over its pretentious pretext and goes somewhere interesting - like, say... the first Human/Cylon war, then I'm in. Otherwise... what's to distinguish it from the umpty other dramas out there, aside from (one would hope) an sfx budget?
Yeah, but those are computer games with tabletop roots. You don't see Eidos hawking Tomb Raider, do you?
And tactile.
On a smoke-filled bridge, it helps if you can feel that you're pulling the lever for the fire control system, as opposed to having accidentally fumbled your way into the other fire control system and launched a torpedo at your tailpipe.
LCARS may be pretty, but if you can't actually see what you're doing, it's completely useless. Manual controls, you can still feel around for what you need with one hand while you're fumbling around for your eyeballs with the other.
My private theory also covers a good number of "holodeck episodes," which is one of the things I dislike about TNG and VOY (better handled in DS9 to a point but still there - maybe there's something about Starfleet-issue holodecks and hulls that sucks in the horrible as well as the "chronitons").
Straight up : Earth-centric time travel and holodecks are an out for the writers. They can write anything they want, not have to piss around brushing up on details of the universe, etc, plug the Trek cast into it and GO!. Got what you think is a good Sherlock Holmes story you can't sell? Swap him out for Data, change a few details, instant episode. Want to parody Flash Gordon, but can't get a network interested? Holodeck episode. Think Star Trek IV would have been better with fewer whales and more Jewish comediennes? Rewrite, replace the TOS crew with the VOY crew. Two parter!
Then there's the ENT temporal cold war. Thinking about it just now made me throw up a little in my mouth.
Time travel - or the holodeck - lets a writer forego exploring the Trek universe in favor of a "reboot switch" episode, allowing them to focus on whatever it is they're actually interested in, do Big Crazy Things without having to worry about the consequences.... and oh yeah, kill the Borg with a force field shaped like a tommy gun,* when the Borg can walk through any other force field on the ship.
Talk about layers upon layers of escapism.
Oh, and let's not forget budgets. It's cheaper to throw in some time travel (or holodeck program or whatever) and go do a location shoot than it is to build sets.
* I know the whole point of that scene was Picard working through some Locutus shit but please. :P