"Wikipedia continues on its inexorable march toward becoming the repository for the world's knowledge"
Clearly not an objective statement.
There may be a lot of articles on Wikipedia. However, the average quality is not high, and it certainly must never ever be treated as a repository of knowledge. It is nothing of the kind.
Here's what everyone needs to do... do what you rarely ever do -- go to any wikipedia page on a subject in which you are expert or very knowledgeable. In all likelihood, you will then realize that this page is riddled with errors, bad writing, glaring omissions, bias and probably other things too.
Why then should anyone EVER trust ANY page on wikipedia? If the pages on subjects you know about are flawed, what makes you think the pages on subjects you don't know about aren't.
Wikipedia should, could, and would be a great resource if it were not run by some of the most ignorant, corrupt, power-hungry assholes on the planet. All those scum are doing is keeping anyone with real knowledge away form the site.
It's a shame, but until Wales and his collaborators are removed from power, there's no hope for wikipedia whatsoever.
I have yet to see that Wikipedia. I go to the one with people collaborating on making articles better. Yes, occasionally a jerk comes along and tries to push a particular point of view, but they generally come to their senses quickly or just go away, often after being blocked from editing.
Where is that wikipedia? I didn't know there were two of them. What's the url? I can only find the one run by jackbooted, book-burning cliquish friends of Jimbo for their own ends and profit. And that one is pretty useless.
But hold on, "blocked from editing"? Could these be the same wikipedias? Looks like they could be. Are you a friend of Jimbo?
"Mozilla has won the most important battle by getting Microsoft off of its ass and actually developing a browser again. While Microsoft had a virtual monopoly on browsers, innovation stalled and security issues exploded. Compare today and 5 years ago and you will see that consumer has gained many things, among them are options to pick another browser while still being able to use most websites."
That's true. However... Mozilla is showing every sign of repeating every mistake they made with Netscape, with Firefox. Compare today with 15 years ago, for that one.
There's far too much feature creep and bloat in Firefox now, and there's still plenty of memory issues that have never been addressed. But worst of all, its lack of multi-threading pushes it far behind the competition.
I used to love Firefox. I still use it for the add-ons, but its lack of utility is becoming a real problem. One that gets worse with every new version.
The best thing this new army of Indonesian developers could do, is strip Firefox back to basics, fix the bugs, give it multi-threading, and recreate all the bloated features from the past 3 or 4 versions as add-ons. What's the point of an add-on system, if all you do is cripple the browser with stuff many people do not need? Allow people to choose.
If they did that, then Firefox could be innovative again. If they don't... well, it's just well on its way to becoming Netscape 2. Which will suffer the same fate.
I'd love to. I really would. However, there's no way of telling an idle post from a worthwhile story in the RSS feed. That's a problem. And it's an unfair one too.
The fairest thing to do would be to have idle as a separate site. That way those who want to read this juvenile, low-brow, digg-style garbage can do so, without it encroaching on those of us who really, really don't.
Unfortunately, the problem is compounded by samzenpus, who only ever posts idle crap -- but does not always post it in "idle". He cross-posts his garbage in all sections of the site, although it is always idle in content. Blocking samzenpus does not solve the problem, again because of the RSS feed.
Please give samzenpus his own site. And keep him off this one.
This is not the way to get the ethos behind file-sharing taken seriously. It's counter-productive and childish.
No. It's funny. Which means people like it. The power of comedy can be enormous. Ask Jon Stewart. It's a perfectly valid way of raising awareness, and using that awareness to create change.
"I'd be more likely to deputize to people who you find are more reliable (basically, trusted moderators chosen from your randomly-selected pool after reviewing their decisions). Your system assumes that most people will be reasonable. I think that is an inherently flawed assumption, including for the very situations listed above. You can't trust that only a minority will think you should remove something that is against the mainstream view."
In theory, that's definitely a better way. The problem is -- as wikipedia proves conclusively -- if you do not choose those moderators wisely, or you are corrupt in your choice of moderators, you end up with a completely failed system very, very quickly.
"get that photoshop does it that way and can see why people looking for a photoshop replacement would want this... but the preference for single window over floating window appears to be moving through all applications."
Photoshop might do that on Windows, but on a Mac you have a choice of screen modes. Floating window is the default, and single window is an option.
I'd guess most professionals use both a Mac and floating window mode -- floating windows is much, much more useful on a multi-monitor set-up.
Gimp is all very nice and all, but it's still many light years away from being a professional tool. I don't love Adobe, nor photoshop -- but for a professional there's no other alternative.
"...most industry analysts already noticed that..."
Most industry analysts make money out of scaremongering such things, and recommending solutions. Many, if not most, of them are snake-oil salesmen. I recommend taking every single thing they say with a pinch of salt.
This article is garbage. Yeah the Internet, like every system, needs good management -- but it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
At what point to we start to consider the past few years as World War III? Seems to me there's been an ever-increasing global Oil/Islamist War going on. We are pretty much fighting the same thing on 4 continents now. Do we have to wait for Oceania and Antarctica, or can we go ahead and call this WWIII now? Or, is is this just the preamble to the real thing -- it certainly feels like it is.
What most of you seem not to understand about sci-fi movies in particular, and most movies in general, is that in order for them to be successful, they need to target the movie to the cinema-going audience.
And folks, that's 12-25 year olds. Specifically for most action movies they are targeting 14 year old boys. (Romcoms are 14 year old girls). And that's the average 14 year old, not just the smartest ones.
Most modern sci-fi movies don't fail as far as Hollywood is concerned -- they make an enormous amount of money and kids love them. Sure, adults, critics and sci-fi fans really hate them, but there's not enough of us going to the cinema to make the slightest bit of difference to Hollywood profits.
Henceforth, you will not see an adult story with realistic dialogue, great acting, great photography and an original plotline. What you will see is 2d good vs bad characters, loads of VFX, melodramatic heroism, and dialogue that no person (nor alien) would ever say in their lives. Because their lowest common denominator teenage audience requires big, flashy, shallow stuff, and nothing else.
The days of adult movies are finished -- in every genre of movies, not just sci-fi. Adults do not go to the cinema. Not enough of them to count anyway. (yes, adult indie arthouse movies will still get made, but they are niche market with niche profits, if any profits. Few of those are ever sci-fi.)
Just wait to see how much you are going to hate "Foundation". There is absolutely no way they can make that movie to satisfy the same target demo as the books. It's going to be a VFX-fest. 14 year old jocks will love it -- none of us will.
The golden age of sci-fi movies is OVER. It is unlikely ever to return with current distribution and marketing methods.
The threat of deletion because of too few reliable sources leads to more reliable sources in the article, and everyone wins, because now we have a well-sourced article. Would this have happened if there had been no threat of deletion? It looks to me like Wikipedia's guidelines work.
2+2 does not equal 5. Sure, fascism produces some great art, and economic benefits. Do you want to live under a fascist regime?
There are other ways of getting good results, there are other ways of getting good sourced articles. There are much better ways than behaving like power-crazed spoiled children. There are much better ways than driving any decent intelligent person away from wikipedia for good.
But no, the jackbooted scum that are the current wikiadmins are intent on driving away the very people who could actually make wikipedia into the resource it should be, but currently is very far from being.
Until such time as the crooked Jimbo and his clique are finally kicked out of wikipedia, there will be no truth, no justice and no trust on that site.
What never ceases to amaze me, is that it appears that Google's upper management don't actually use Google to search for things. If they did, surely their page rank would be more effective, and the need for domain blocking would be considerably less. Or perhaps, just a cool feature to help you personalize your search, rather than an essential tool to try to get at least some of the search-spam under control.
The considerable rise in link-farm spam in search results over the past few years is pretty conclusive proof that no-one high enough up in Google is actually using their own product. If they did, they'd either be ashamed to show face ever again, or they'd be kicking enough ass to get Search back into something they could be proud of.
Google today is no better than Altavista was in 1997 -- worse in fact, because back then there was more competition.
Since the moon isn't covered by any legal jurisdiction, it would be a perfect place to set up a data haven. In fact, I believe one company already has plans to set up a lunar facility.
The moon's not covered by any legal jurisdiction, because at the moment, it doesn't really need to be. Once any human activity starts, the lawyers will crawl out of the woodwork, and treaties, contracts and agreements will begin to stack up nicely. Pretty much as it does in International Marine Law.
It's an whole new way for lawyers to make money, and that they surely will. For every company planning something interesting on the moon, there's at least one law firm that has considered the implications, and their fee.
It's a different director for the next Matrix movies - Uwe Boll.
Paris Hilton is cast as Trinity and John Travolta is playing Morpheus. It's a reboot where instead of being batteries for the machines the humans are sex toys but for ratings purposes there will be no nudity. Ahmed Best is voicing the amusing machine sidekick who helps the heroes fight the bumbling Agent Smith played by Adam Sandler.
Ah... I was interested in seeing this until the no nudity part. It sounded better than any of the Matrix movies. Add some nudity and I'm in. Add nudity in 3d and I'm definitely in.
"Plus the VLC interface on the iPhone was pretty bad."
And on most other platforms too. It has a truly horrific interface on Windows.
I note in the summary that:
"VLC developer Rémi Denis-Courmont notes that he is 'not going to pity the owners of iDevices, and not even the MobileVLC developers who doubtless wasted a lot of their time. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone.'"
In fact, he pities no-one. No-one at all -- as anyone who has ever tried to get a straight answer in the VLC forums will know. Possibly one of the most arrogant, unhelpful people in France -- and that's saying something.
VLC should be a truly great application, but it's held back by Denis-Courmont and his minions.
"Absolutely loved Brian Cox's "Wonders of the Solar System". Personally, would prefer the Beeb spent their cash on that, rather than shows like this..."
If you live in the UK, it's our cash, not theirs. Not that they spend it in any kind of representative manner. While it is true that this kind of show is closer to their public service remit than the vast majority of their soap/reality/cooking/make-over show output, it still wasn't very good quality.
It's been so long since the BBC has had to actually try to create a production with high quality production values, that there's no producers working for them with the talent to do so.
This was pretty typical BBC: sort of intelligent, but also sort of dumb, bad camerawork, presenters who try to make the show all about themselves -- and all in all, a bit dull and patronising.
The euro is an international currency, the Anglo-sphere can try to "regulate" language all they want, but it just looks foolish. There is a reason why we use euro/euros for different things: "This game costs twenty euro. I had a bill of fifty euro yesterday, but I spent most of it on clothing. Oh wait, I still have twenty euros in my pocket, I can pay for it!"
No-one cares. The point was communicated, that's what counts. Language is a fluid thing -- despite the futile attempts by those from Dr Johnson onwards to bend it into conformity. It's arbitrary, and artificial. Bending and breaking words to suit worked for Shakespeare. Conformity is the enemy of creativity.
Grammar nazis may wish to live in a sterile world -- but most of us don't. Give it a rest.
Naming Google Wave, and much of its associated development, after the creations of Joss Whedon was just asking for cancellation.
He's the TV equivalent of the RMS Titanic.
Probably a good methodology to follow if you want a lot of depressive, angry 16 year old girls to take up your product, but not if you want wider success.
Yes some of those are comic superhero series but you're delusional if you think there isn't a majority crossover between the audiences.
It's not so simple.
Movies and TV have a completely different demographic. Sci-Fi movies are generally targeted at the teenage male market, specifically 14 year olds. Whereas if you do that for TV, you will have no audience that pays you, since Networks only pay for the A18-49 viewers. Plus, movies generate revenue for the producers from cinema tickets sales, TV rights, iTunes Sales and DVD sales. That happens for TV shows too -- but in most cases the Network sees none of that money, since they are not the producers of the shows.
Star Trek TOS crashed and burned on Network TV. It only worked in syndication. Subsequent ST shows were produced directly for syndication. While there were some great ideas in some of the ST shows, it was a franchise that was pretty much lowest common denominator TV, it rarely took risks or was innovative. It had pretty much 10-12 plotlines that it recylced every season. Plus most of these shows aired in times when there was less cable and less timeshifting. All the networks had MUCH higher ratings for all shows.
If you are willing to produce a show with little artistic integrity, one that basically recycles the same good vs bad two dimensional characters that everyone has seen an hundred times, with theatrical actors that overact and deliver melodramatic technobabble with the words "duty" and "honor" on every page of the script, then you probably will produce a successful show.
If, however, you want to try something new... you have to be very lucky. SGU, was the first Sci-fi show to really base itself in truth. Truth in terms of complex characters, realistic dialogue, realistic acting, realistic pacing and momentum, minimal vfx that actually added to the story, and the best cinematography on TV, period. Unfortunately, it was borne out of a franchise that lacked all of these things previously. It was on a channel that generally outputs light, cheap, dumb, badly produced, shallow, two-dimensional shows -- see Eureka for proof, but you could pick pretty much any other show.
SGU might have worked on HBO, or AMC or Showtime, where its audience would have been higher-brow and more adult. It would have appealed to a non-sci-fi audience if marketed correctly. Unfortunately that was never going to happen on Syfy, and unlikely to happen with the burden of the Stargate lineage.
The fact that the show is produced by MGM, and that Syfy gains no revenue from international distribution, nor DVD, nor iTunes sales, didn't help it.
SGU is still probably a viable show. It will sell well on DVD, it will sell internationally, it will sell on iTunes -- however, with the business model that is currently setup by networks, there's too high a marketing curve without a network pumping out the show. And it is too expensive a show for a network to take the risk of losing ad revenue by scheduling it.
MGM could take risks and try to break the network business model. It probably would work, there's enough of a global audience out there for the show -- however, even money they won't try to do that.
The business model for networks is broken. Neilsen does not work. There's too much of a gap between production companies and networks. HBO works, because it does not follow this model. They produce their own shows, their subscriptions pay their admin costs, and their international sales and DVD revenue give them profit. This model works. This model would work for intelligent sci-fi too.
There is absolutely no technical reason whatsoever, why someone cannot set up an HBO style network for Sci-fi. And even have that network available all over the World by subscription through the internet (it works for MLB.TV). That way you can say fuck you to Neilsen and cancellation due to low A18-49 ratings, forever.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly not an objective statement.
There may be a lot of articles on Wikipedia. However, the average quality is not high, and it certainly must never ever be treated as a repository of knowledge. It is nothing of the kind.
Here's what everyone needs to do... do what you rarely ever do -- go to any wikipedia page on a subject in which you are expert or very knowledgeable. In all likelihood, you will then realize that this page is riddled with errors, bad writing, glaring omissions, bias and probably other things too.
Why then should anyone EVER trust ANY page on wikipedia? If the pages on subjects you know about are flawed, what makes you think the pages on subjects you don't know about aren't.
Wikipedia should, could, and would be a great resource if it were not run by some of the most ignorant, corrupt, power-hungry assholes on the planet. All those scum are doing is keeping anyone with real knowledge away form the site.
It's a shame, but until Wales and his collaborators are removed from power, there's no hope for wikipedia whatsoever.
I'd imagine wikipedia admins would accept many other currencies to keep on doing what they are doing too. Jimbo, especially.
And that's the problem with wikipedia, right there.
Where is that wikipedia? I didn't know there were two of them. What's the url? I can only find the one run by jackbooted, book-burning cliquish friends of Jimbo for their own ends and profit. And that one is pretty useless.
But hold on, "blocked from editing"? Could these be the same wikipedias? Looks like they could be. Are you a friend of Jimbo?
That's true. However... Mozilla is showing every sign of repeating every mistake they made with Netscape, with Firefox. Compare today with 15 years ago, for that one.
There's far too much feature creep and bloat in Firefox now, and there's still plenty of memory issues that have never been addressed. But worst of all, its lack of multi-threading pushes it far behind the competition.
I used to love Firefox. I still use it for the add-ons, but its lack of utility is becoming a real problem. One that gets worse with every new version.
The best thing this new army of Indonesian developers could do, is strip Firefox back to basics, fix the bugs, give it multi-threading, and recreate all the bloated features from the past 3 or 4 versions as add-ons. What's the point of an add-on system, if all you do is cripple the browser with stuff many people do not need? Allow people to choose.
If they did that, then Firefox could be innovative again. If they don't... well, it's just well on its way to becoming Netscape 2. Which will suffer the same fate.
I'd love to. I really would. However, there's no way of telling an idle post from a worthwhile story in the RSS feed. That's a problem. And it's an unfair one too.
The fairest thing to do would be to have idle as a separate site. That way those who want to read this juvenile, low-brow, digg-style garbage can do so, without it encroaching on those of us who really, really don't.
Unfortunately, the problem is compounded by samzenpus, who only ever posts idle crap -- but does not always post it in "idle". He cross-posts his garbage in all sections of the site, although it is always idle in content. Blocking samzenpus does not solve the problem, again because of the RSS feed.
Please give samzenpus his own site. And keep him off this one.
No. It's funny. Which means people like it. The power of comedy can be enormous. Ask Jon Stewart. It's a perfectly valid way of raising awareness, and using that awareness to create change.
In theory, that's definitely a better way. The problem is -- as wikipedia proves conclusively -- if you do not choose those moderators wisely, or you are corrupt in your choice of moderators, you end up with a completely failed system very, very quickly.
Photoshop might do that on Windows, but on a Mac you have a choice of screen modes. Floating window is the default, and single window is an option.
I'd guess most professionals use both a Mac and floating window mode -- floating windows is much, much more useful on a multi-monitor set-up.
Gimp is all very nice and all, but it's still many light years away from being a professional tool. I don't love Adobe, nor photoshop -- but for a professional there's no other alternative.
Most industry analysts make money out of scaremongering such things, and recommending solutions. Many, if not most, of them are snake-oil salesmen. I recommend taking every single thing they say with a pinch of salt.
This article is garbage. Yeah the Internet, like every system, needs good management -- but it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
At what point to we start to consider the past few years as World War III? Seems to me there's been an ever-increasing global Oil/Islamist War going on. We are pretty much fighting the same thing on 4 continents now. Do we have to wait for Oceania and Antarctica, or can we go ahead and call this WWIII now? Or, is is this just the preamble to the real thing -- it certainly feels like it is.
What most of you seem not to understand about sci-fi movies in particular, and most movies in general, is that in order for them to be successful, they need to target the movie to the cinema-going audience.
And folks, that's 12-25 year olds. Specifically for most action movies they are targeting 14 year old boys. (Romcoms are 14 year old girls). And that's the average 14 year old, not just the smartest ones.
Most modern sci-fi movies don't fail as far as Hollywood is concerned -- they make an enormous amount of money and kids love them. Sure, adults, critics and sci-fi fans really hate them, but there's not enough of us going to the cinema to make the slightest bit of difference to Hollywood profits.
Henceforth, you will not see an adult story with realistic dialogue, great acting, great photography and an original plotline. What you will see is 2d good vs bad characters, loads of VFX, melodramatic heroism, and dialogue that no person (nor alien) would ever say in their lives. Because their lowest common denominator teenage audience requires big, flashy, shallow stuff, and nothing else.
The days of adult movies are finished -- in every genre of movies, not just sci-fi. Adults do not go to the cinema. Not enough of them to count anyway. (yes, adult indie arthouse movies will still get made, but they are niche market with niche profits, if any profits. Few of those are ever sci-fi.)
Just wait to see how much you are going to hate "Foundation". There is absolutely no way they can make that movie to satisfy the same target demo as the books. It's going to be a VFX-fest. 14 year old jocks will love it -- none of us will.
The golden age of sci-fi movies is OVER. It is unlikely ever to return with current distribution and marketing methods.
2+2 does not equal 5. Sure, fascism produces some great art, and economic benefits. Do you want to live under a fascist regime?
There are other ways of getting good results, there are other ways of getting good sourced articles. There are much better ways than behaving like power-crazed spoiled children. There are much better ways than driving any decent intelligent person away from wikipedia for good.
But no, the jackbooted scum that are the current wikiadmins are intent on driving away the very people who could actually make wikipedia into the resource it should be, but currently is very far from being.
Until such time as the crooked Jimbo and his clique are finally kicked out of wikipedia, there will be no truth, no justice and no trust on that site.
What never ceases to amaze me, is that it appears that Google's upper management don't actually use Google to search for things. If they did, surely their page rank would be more effective, and the need for domain blocking would be considerably less. Or perhaps, just a cool feature to help you personalize your search, rather than an essential tool to try to get at least some of the search-spam under control.
The considerable rise in link-farm spam in search results over the past few years is pretty conclusive proof that no-one high enough up in Google is actually using their own product. If they did, they'd either be ashamed to show face ever again, or they'd be kicking enough ass to get Search back into something they could be proud of.
Google today is no better than Altavista was in 1997 -- worse in fact, because back then there was more competition.
The moon's not covered by any legal jurisdiction, because at the moment, it doesn't really need to be. Once any human activity starts, the lawyers will crawl out of the woodwork, and treaties, contracts and agreements will begin to stack up nicely. Pretty much as it does in International Marine Law.
It's an whole new way for lawyers to make money, and that they surely will. For every company planning something interesting on the moon, there's at least one law firm that has considered the implications, and their fee.
I always tend to think of if more as "New Corpse". They do love their fear-soaked leading stories after all.
Ah... I was interested in seeing this until the no nudity part. It sounded better than any of the Matrix movies. Add some nudity and I'm in. Add nudity in 3d and I'm definitely in.
And you know this wasn't what he meant... how? Grammar Nazis: people most of us either could, or couldn't, care less about.
You probably do, without knowing it. It's the code behind 1% of the World's websites. Including a lot of government and local government websites.
It's easy to visualize 100GB of data. Just view it as a percentage of the Library of Congress -- e.g. a door, or small closet.
Of course it's fluid. What do they think the Whalers sail on?
And on most other platforms too. It has a truly horrific interface on Windows.
I note in the summary that:
In fact, he pities no-one. No-one at all -- as anyone who has ever tried to get a straight answer in the VLC forums will know. Possibly one of the most arrogant, unhelpful people in France -- and that's saying something.
VLC should be a truly great application, but it's held back by Denis-Courmont and his minions.
If you live in the UK, it's our cash, not theirs. Not that they spend it in any kind of representative manner. While it is true that this kind of show is closer to their public service remit than the vast majority of their soap/reality/cooking/make-over show output, it still wasn't very good quality.
It's been so long since the BBC has had to actually try to create a production with high quality production values, that there's no producers working for them with the talent to do so.
This was pretty typical BBC: sort of intelligent, but also sort of dumb, bad camerawork, presenters who try to make the show all about themselves -- and all in all, a bit dull and patronising.
No-one cares. The point was communicated, that's what counts. Language is a fluid thing -- despite the futile attempts by those from Dr Johnson onwards to bend it into conformity. It's arbitrary, and artificial. Bending and breaking words to suit worked for Shakespeare. Conformity is the enemy of creativity.
Grammar nazis may wish to live in a sterile world -- but most of us don't. Give it a rest.
Naming Google Wave, and much of its associated development, after the creations of Joss Whedon was just asking for cancellation.
He's the TV equivalent of the RMS Titanic.
Probably a good methodology to follow if you want a lot of depressive, angry 16 year old girls to take up your product, but not if you want wider success.
It's not so simple.
Movies and TV have a completely different demographic. Sci-Fi movies are generally targeted at the teenage male market, specifically 14 year olds. Whereas if you do that for TV, you will have no audience that pays you, since Networks only pay for the A18-49 viewers. Plus, movies generate revenue for the producers from cinema tickets sales, TV rights, iTunes Sales and DVD sales. That happens for TV shows too -- but in most cases the Network sees none of that money, since they are not the producers of the shows.
Star Trek TOS crashed and burned on Network TV. It only worked in syndication. Subsequent ST shows were produced directly for syndication. While there were some great ideas in some of the ST shows, it was a franchise that was pretty much lowest common denominator TV, it rarely took risks or was innovative. It had pretty much 10-12 plotlines that it recylced every season. Plus most of these shows aired in times when there was less cable and less timeshifting. All the networks had MUCH higher ratings for all shows.
If you are willing to produce a show with little artistic integrity, one that basically recycles the same good vs bad two dimensional characters that everyone has seen an hundred times, with theatrical actors that overact and deliver melodramatic technobabble with the words "duty" and "honor" on every page of the script, then you probably will produce a successful show.
If, however, you want to try something new... you have to be very lucky. SGU, was the first Sci-fi show to really base itself in truth. Truth in terms of complex characters, realistic dialogue, realistic acting, realistic pacing and momentum, minimal vfx that actually added to the story, and the best cinematography on TV, period. Unfortunately, it was borne out of a franchise that lacked all of these things previously. It was on a channel that generally outputs light, cheap, dumb, badly produced, shallow, two-dimensional shows -- see Eureka for proof, but you could pick pretty much any other show.
SGU might have worked on HBO, or AMC or Showtime, where its audience would have been higher-brow and more adult. It would have appealed to a non-sci-fi audience if marketed correctly. Unfortunately that was never going to happen on Syfy, and unlikely to happen with the burden of the Stargate lineage.
The fact that the show is produced by MGM, and that Syfy gains no revenue from international distribution, nor DVD, nor iTunes sales, didn't help it.
SGU is still probably a viable show. It will sell well on DVD, it will sell internationally, it will sell on iTunes -- however, with the business model that is currently setup by networks, there's too high a marketing curve without a network pumping out the show. And it is too expensive a show for a network to take the risk of losing ad revenue by scheduling it.
MGM could take risks and try to break the network business model. It probably would work, there's enough of a global audience out there for the show -- however, even money they won't try to do that.
The business model for networks is broken. Neilsen does not work. There's too much of a gap between production companies and networks. HBO works, because it does not follow this model. They produce their own shows, their subscriptions pay their admin costs, and their international sales and DVD revenue give them profit. This model works. This model would work for intelligent sci-fi too.
There is absolutely no technical reason whatsoever, why someone cannot set up an HBO style network for Sci-fi. And even have that network available all over the World by subscription through the internet (it works for MLB.TV). That way you can say fuck you to Neilsen and cancellation due to low A18-49 ratings, forever.