The only thing that makes the web so attractive is the barrier to entry : free, nothing to install, immediate access to the average brains of millions. Just like TV. No thanks for dumbing it down to this. And now you wanna make it faster? Piss off. Go write real code that does something, not just another abstraction layer.
Fun fact: Programmers don't choose the platform. Users do.
I just subscribed to Newsday.com. I'm Customer36. That's my username. I'm going to be blogging about my adventures with one of the worst ideas for a paywall ever.
Fun fact: Newsday doesn't ask for your credit card when you subscribe. They call you later. Must not have anticipated much demand.
It combined all the things I really liked about social networking into a simple format. Its existence was confirmation to me that you could keep a site's identity going beyond the site. Plus, it was a brilliant reaction to Twitter. What a shame they're scaling it back.
... let's compare the full-fledged open-source app which I never use because it requires a download to the great-because-it's-simple Web app I can access on every computer I use without a problem.
Shove it, Bruce. You don't know what you're talking about.
My life has gotten easier since I started using Web apps for simple tasks and not downloading a bunch of stuff I never use. End users want less clutter, not more.
Remember Watergate? That was a potentially harmful story. But the Washington Post told it anyway. They held people's feet to the fire. And it's considered a watershed moment for journalism, despite all the background sources they had to use.
It's not a good philosophy for journalists to have. It's better for us to tell the story and play ethically than not to at all, because we're afraid of what will happen. Don't you think that people would rather know the big story instead of not telling it because of some details which could be damaging to a person's personal life?
I think the response to this specific case is reason enough to say that the newspaper made the right move in not publishing her name. Just imagine how bad this would be for the family if she had been named. I think this case reinforces the need to have these ethical controls, not hold them back. The bloggers are in the wrong here, not the newspaper.
Because revealing the names of victims when it means that people can get screwed with is never cool.
It's not elitism, it's an attempt to tell a story without going down to the level of bloggers who don't have the blinders on like that. This victim gets treated just like a rape victim for the same reason, which is that it could have repercussions in the victim's personal life.
I don't know about you, but I would rather withhold information if it means protecting someone's safety or reputation. Internet or not, it's just a shitty thing to do to another human being.
Disclosure: I'm a journalist. And an internet nerd. And while I skew towards the internet nerd side of things for the most part in my philosophy, I don't agree with your response AT ALL. Sometimes, people need to be protected from the limelight, for their own safety.
...and it was so expensive to fix, I bought another (used) iBook. With Applecare.
And of course, this machine had a similar (if not exactly the same) problem about eight months after I got it. Thank God for Applecare.
I've been following this whole situation for months. You can't compromise with these editors and their interpretation of policy. And believe me, I've tried. I suggest you take a look at the Fair Use talk page, which may perhaps be the most heated talk page on Wikipedia. People are not only removing fair-use images of people wholesale (esp. if they're only used for identification of the person, which I think is far too high a standard) but they're supported heavily in this, no matter how much other users complain.
Ultimately, in a perfect world, we'd certainly love to have everything be free, but looking at reality, where copyright is a much tougher monster to defeat in content than it is in software, we have to play by the rules while pushing to improve them. We can't have it both ways.
If you read up on your history of Wikipedia, you know that it started out as a way to push the open-source and Richard Stallman free gospel through an encyclopedia.
But that's clearly not what Wikipedia has become. It's become a strong source for pop-culture knowledge and trivia, as well as everything else under the sun. The thing that draws people to it is not its original openness, but the fact that it's a microcosm of what people are actually interested in.
But try telling that to some of the people who work on the site, who are so obsessed with trying to make the site GFDL-compliant, above all else, that they've basically been willing to sacrifice the quality of the site by pushing for free resources over what's available legally.
This is largely a problem with images. Most media companies put out fair-use promotional images for products and shows, along with people, but because we follow the rules so closely to the T, these images aren't available for us. In the example of people, the standard is so high as to when it's okay to allow for a fair-use image - if a person's alive, no matter how hard they are to get in touch with, there's enough possibility to allow for a license-free image that we can't even put a fair use image on the page. Identifying a person isn't a good enough reason to put a fair-use image on the page, even though that's pretty much the point of putting a photo of a person on a page.
The logic is that fair-use images discourage free images, and since Wikipedia's trying to be free, we need to get rid of fair-use images. They discourage resale of content as books down the line, even though its Web form is far more useful.
As a result of all this, there are a handful of editors out there who have made it their mission to remove these images wholesale, no matter how much average users protest. It's just silly.
I work in the media for a living, and I haven't found anyone with tighter, more unrealistic standards about content than Wikipedia. The site is in its own way a member of the media and needs to start playing by the same rules as everyone else, or quality is going to suffer. They need to make calls to PR people. They need to agree to licensing standards when grabbing photos. They need to understand that there's a limit to what free can do, especially in an industry known for copyright. And this problem stems from the top - Jimbo Wales has a fairly hard-line view on copyright that many editors are picking up.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but I didn't get into Wikipedia for the free-as-in-speech part. I got into it because was freely-editable and easy for the average person to improve. But because of a draconian interpretation of a rule, many articles are having a difficulty improving. The average user is getting forgotten because the original mission is incompatible with what Wikipedia has become, and the people pushing for the original mission have clearly lost sight of this.
I hope they realize their mistake before Wikipedia bleeds quality any further.
A photojournalist will have a far better idea of what he's doing than some schmuck with a cameraphone. You can easily tell the difference between a pro shot and an amateur one, and that won't change no matter how many cameraphones there are in the world.
Those guiding principles need wiggle room or they won't be successful long-term. Ubuntu is a much better model to follow.
Since you saw through my point the last time I posted it, here it is a few more times: Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian.
Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian.
Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian.
Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian.
Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian.
If the Wikimedia Foundation disagrees, then they shouldn't expect long-term success out of the project.
No they're not most likely, but they work great for their legal primary usage. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian and more like how people actually primarily use it.
Wikipedia is falling under the bureaucratic knife here. Currently there is a major campaign being put on from a handful of editors to remove fair use images -- that is, free to use but copyrighted -- in favor of copyright-free images. They've removed something like 30,000 fair use images from biographical articles and have been replacing them with lower-quality photos. In one case, they tried to use a really atrocious cell phone photo instead of a promotional shot. Jimbo Wales for some reason supports this insanity.
Bureaucracy is slowly turning Wikipedia into a not-very-fun place. Editors are ruining great articles by being too overzealous. The notability thing is just one example.
See, even before Jonathan Ive, the Woz knew how to build a non-beige-box design! Apple truly was ahead of its time when it came to industrial design! *fapfapfap*
First off, my credentials: I'm the former employee of an experimental newspaper, Bluffton Today (http://www.blufftontoday.com), located in Bluffton, South Carolina. It's an exciting place, let me tell you. The focus has been on reverse publishing but at the same time tempering blogs with traditional journalism. The staff still writes articles; they still edit heavily. They use the web only to the degree where it doesn't dip into libel and slander and builds on its strengths.
My question to you is, do you think Bluffton is on the right track? It felt like, in the 15 months I was there, they definitely were, but I'm a biased party. I left thinking, "If only newspapers did more of this..."
I know what I'm betting the farm on in my career, and it isn't tired, boring, traditional journalism. It isn't the straight and narrow of blogs, either. Rather, I feel that it's important to look at both sides and find how they can work together, because God knows there's some 60-year-old editor somewhere who won't look at Bluffton as anything more than a gimmick. I'm gonna be that guy in the newsroom fighting the good fight to get more untraditional voices into the the paper in more places than the editorial page.
I design newspaper pages, and many of our headers, bylines and headlines are in all caps. Losing this key would complicate my job.
Just because you can't see a reason for something to exist doesn't mean it has none. Remember that.
You don't know what you're talking about and somehow managed to get up from the surface from under your bridge.
Not only does this suit have no merit, you didn't even post proof of what you're saying. Just some baseless claim.
...first of all, the list looks like it was created by the intern in Powerpoint using Google Image Search, and then quickly converted to JPGs. Why the hell would you lay this out as a slideshow? It instantly means you can't easily copy and paste the text.
How about the list itself? It's like they chose some of the things randomly -- example; VMware is a great piece of software, but is it really more essential to the workplace than Windows and Microsoft Office, two programs end-users make heavy use of daily? And why list Linux in general, then Red Hat? That seems somewhat disingenuous. Plus, they missed a few pretty big ones, like the Internet, ethernet, CD-ROMs, VoIP and mice. Looks like the intern had a pretty busy week, coming up with this list all by himself.
...this pilot is hilarious. It twists the conventions of sitcoms multiple ways, turns the studio audience into a plot device, turns the guest stars into pathetic parodies of themselves, makes fun of other sitcoms that suck, and even trashes the just-don't-get-it higher-ups, the race for both ratings and vicious critics (the title spawns a pretty good joke).
This show has great pedigree due to the fact that its creator is also responsible for "Spin City" and "Scrubs," and is totally worth your time. Thank God YouTube got it before "Brilliant But Cancelled" did.
"There isn't that much we can do," acknowledges Aileen Atkins, Napster's senior vice president for business affairs and general counsel. "If they have an iPod, they're going to buy it on iTunes. It's a fact of life."
Wow. You know your business model's in trouble if your own VP doesn't buy into your FUD.
Man, I miss the good ol' days when you could run a music FTP undetectable on the university's fat pipe, and nobody would bat an eye. The selection was usually better than the RIAA's endless crapstream of "tunes," too.
...it sure feels like they're trying to solve all their problems by throwing Eggserronious on them.
Let's not blame MySpace for any behavioral/discipline/legal problems. The real problem is that, much like the Last Chance kids from "Camp," you spent all your time allowing the older kids to treat them like dirt, and only Ernest (despite the whole posion ivy incident) really cared about them -- enough so that he was able to stop Kramer Construction singlehandedly.
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing that makes the web so attractive is the barrier to entry : free, nothing to install, immediate access to the average brains of millions. Just like TV. No thanks for dumbing it down to this. And now you wanna make it faster? Piss off. Go write real code that does something, not just another abstraction layer.
Fun fact: Programmers don't choose the platform. Users do.
I just subscribed to Newsday.com. I'm Customer36. That's my username. I'm going to be blogging about my adventures with one of the worst ideas for a paywall ever.
Fun fact: Newsday doesn't ask for your credit card when you subscribe. They call you later. Must not have anticipated much demand.
http://shortformblog.com/biz/our-adventures-as-newsday-customer-no-36-the-subscription
It combined all the things I really liked about social networking into a simple format. Its existence was confirmation to me that you could keep a site's identity going beyond the site. Plus, it was a brilliant reaction to Twitter. What a shame they're scaling it back.
But then again, I apparently have an unhealthy mancrush on Kevin Rose, because I posted as much on my blog a couple weeks ago.
... let's compare the full-fledged open-source app which I never use because it requires a download to the great-because-it's-simple Web app I can access on every computer I use without a problem.
Shove it, Bruce. You don't know what you're talking about.
My life has gotten easier since I started using Web apps for simple tasks and not downloading a bunch of stuff I never use. End users want less clutter, not more.
I bet this kid gets shoved into so many lockers for being a suck-up to the administration when NetworkWorld isn't writing articles about him.
I remember this kid when I was in school. He was not a popular kid.
It's not a good philosophy for journalists to have. It's better for us to tell the story and play ethically than not to at all, because we're afraid of what will happen. Don't you think that people would rather know the big story instead of not telling it because of some details which could be damaging to a person's personal life?
I think the response to this specific case is reason enough to say that the newspaper made the right move in not publishing her name. Just imagine how bad this would be for the family if she had been named. I think this case reinforces the need to have these ethical controls, not hold them back. The bloggers are in the wrong here, not the newspaper.
It's not elitism, it's an attempt to tell a story without going down to the level of bloggers who don't have the blinders on like that. This victim gets treated just like a rape victim for the same reason, which is that it could have repercussions in the victim's personal life.
I don't know about you, but I would rather withhold information if it means protecting someone's safety or reputation. Internet or not, it's just a shitty thing to do to another human being.
Disclosure: I'm a journalist. And an internet nerd. And while I skew towards the internet nerd side of things for the most part in my philosophy, I don't agree with your response AT ALL. Sometimes, people need to be protected from the limelight, for their own safety.
...and it was so expensive to fix, I bought another (used) iBook. With Applecare. And of course, this machine had a similar (if not exactly the same) problem about eight months after I got it. Thank God for Applecare.
Ultimately, in a perfect world, we'd certainly love to have everything be free, but looking at reality, where copyright is a much tougher monster to defeat in content than it is in software, we have to play by the rules while pushing to improve them. We can't have it both ways.
But that's clearly not what Wikipedia has become. It's become a strong source for pop-culture knowledge and trivia, as well as everything else under the sun. The thing that draws people to it is not its original openness, but the fact that it's a microcosm of what people are actually interested in.
But try telling that to some of the people who work on the site, who are so obsessed with trying to make the site GFDL-compliant, above all else, that they've basically been willing to sacrifice the quality of the site by pushing for free resources over what's available legally.
This is largely a problem with images. Most media companies put out fair-use promotional images for products and shows, along with people, but because we follow the rules so closely to the T, these images aren't available for us. In the example of people, the standard is so high as to when it's okay to allow for a fair-use image - if a person's alive, no matter how hard they are to get in touch with, there's enough possibility to allow for a license-free image that we can't even put a fair use image on the page. Identifying a person isn't a good enough reason to put a fair-use image on the page, even though that's pretty much the point of putting a photo of a person on a page.
The logic is that fair-use images discourage free images, and since Wikipedia's trying to be free, we need to get rid of fair-use images. They discourage resale of content as books down the line, even though its Web form is far more useful.
As a result of all this, there are a handful of editors out there who have made it their mission to remove these images wholesale, no matter how much average users protest. It's just silly.
I work in the media for a living, and I haven't found anyone with tighter, more unrealistic standards about content than Wikipedia. The site is in its own way a member of the media and needs to start playing by the same rules as everyone else, or quality is going to suffer. They need to make calls to PR people. They need to agree to licensing standards when grabbing photos. They need to understand that there's a limit to what free can do, especially in an industry known for copyright. And this problem stems from the top - Jimbo Wales has a fairly hard-line view on copyright that many editors are picking up.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but I didn't get into Wikipedia for the free-as-in-speech part. I got into it because was freely-editable and easy for the average person to improve. But because of a draconian interpretation of a rule, many articles are having a difficulty improving. The average user is getting forgotten because the original mission is incompatible with what Wikipedia has become, and the people pushing for the original mission have clearly lost sight of this.
I hope they realize their mistake before Wikipedia bleeds quality any further.
A photojournalist will have a far better idea of what he's doing than some schmuck with a cameraphone. You can easily tell the difference between a pro shot and an amateur one, and that won't change no matter how many cameraphones there are in the world.
Those guiding principles need wiggle room or they won't be successful long-term. Ubuntu is a much better model to follow. Since you saw through my point the last time I posted it, here it is a few more times: Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian. If the Wikimedia Foundation disagrees, then they shouldn't expect long-term success out of the project.
No they're not most likely, but they work great for their legal primary usage. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian and more like how people actually primarily use it.
That's because you're an extremist idiot and you are notable as a result. Just sayin'.
Wikipedia is falling under the bureaucratic knife here. Currently there is a major campaign being put on from a handful of editors to remove fair use images -- that is, free to use but copyrighted -- in favor of copyright-free images. They've removed something like 30,000 fair use images from biographical articles and have been replacing them with lower-quality photos. In one case, they tried to use a really atrocious cell phone photo instead of a promotional shot. Jimbo Wales for some reason supports this insanity.
Bureaucracy is slowly turning Wikipedia into a not-very-fun place. Editors are ruining great articles by being too overzealous. The notability thing is just one example.
...but it seems like the submitter has something personal against Facebook, and that should be kept in mind when reading the article.
See, even before Jonathan Ive, the Woz knew how to build a non-beige-box design! Apple truly was ahead of its time when it came to industrial design! *fapfapfap*
First off, my credentials: I'm the former employee of an experimental newspaper, Bluffton Today (http://www.blufftontoday.com), located in Bluffton, South Carolina. It's an exciting place, let me tell you. The focus has been on reverse publishing but at the same time tempering blogs with traditional journalism. The staff still writes articles; they still edit heavily. They use the web only to the degree where it doesn't dip into libel and slander and builds on its strengths. My question to you is, do you think Bluffton is on the right track? It felt like, in the 15 months I was there, they definitely were, but I'm a biased party. I left thinking, "If only newspapers did more of this..." I know what I'm betting the farm on in my career, and it isn't tired, boring, traditional journalism. It isn't the straight and narrow of blogs, either. Rather, I feel that it's important to look at both sides and find how they can work together, because God knows there's some 60-year-old editor somewhere who won't look at Bluffton as anything more than a gimmick. I'm gonna be that guy in the newsroom fighting the good fight to get more untraditional voices into the the paper in more places than the editorial page.
I design newspaper pages, and many of our headers, bylines and headlines are in all caps. Losing this key would complicate my job. Just because you can't see a reason for something to exist doesn't mean it has none. Remember that.
You don't know what you're talking about and somehow managed to get up from the surface from under your bridge. Not only does this suit have no merit, you didn't even post proof of what you're saying. Just some baseless claim.
...first of all, the list looks like it was created by the intern in Powerpoint using Google Image Search, and then quickly converted to JPGs. Why the hell would you lay this out as a slideshow? It instantly means you can't easily copy and paste the text.
How about the list itself? It's like they chose some of the things randomly -- example; VMware is a great piece of software, but is it really more essential to the workplace than Windows and Microsoft Office, two programs end-users make heavy use of daily? And why list Linux in general, then Red Hat? That seems somewhat disingenuous. Plus, they missed a few pretty big ones, like the Internet, ethernet, CD-ROMs, VoIP and mice. Looks like the intern had a pretty busy week, coming up with this list all by himself.
This show has great pedigree due to the fact that its creator is also responsible for "Spin City" and "Scrubs," and is totally worth your time. Thank God YouTube got it before "Brilliant But Cancelled" did.
Wow. You know your business model's in trouble if your own VP doesn't buy into your FUD.
Man, I miss the good ol' days when you could run a music FTP undetectable on the university's fat pipe, and nobody would bat an eye. The selection was usually better than the RIAA's endless crapstream of "tunes," too.
Let's not blame MySpace for any behavioral/discipline/legal problems. The real problem is that, much like the Last Chance kids from "Camp," you spent all your time allowing the older kids to treat them like dirt, and only Ernest (despite the whole posion ivy incident) really cared about them -- enough so that he was able to stop Kramer Construction singlehandedly.
God, I love that movie.
...validate? :D