"People thought communicators were way to far out too when TOS came out. Now we take
them for granted."
er... transporters maybe, but most people in 1966 were pretty familiar with radio... and funnily enough, even the idea of sending pictures over the air, since that's how they watched the show.
That's 90 million people (with a good income) who won't be seeing anything designed in Flash.
If that's not a good reason to stop using Flash on websites, I don't know what is. If you're an advertiser, and you use those annoying Flash ads that we all hate, then it's time to change, or die.
I may not agree with all of Apple's reasons for not using Flash, but I sure as hell love the result.
"As long as Flash and its cousins Flex and Shockwave remain the simplest tools for producing drop-dead gorgeous Websites, they'll keep their place on the Internet."
You want to know the most basic reason I despise Flash? It breaks the back button.
The fundamental problem with Flash, is that end user-experience and preferences are totally ignored. Yeah, maybe it's nice for developers, maybe it's nice for content providers -- but it totally sucks for users. Why should I bother to choose a browser and customize it, if Flash is just going to come along and ignore the buttons and menus bars, play me music I don't want to hear, autoplay video when I'm trying to read another part of a page?
The problem with developers who choose Flash, is that they don't give a damn about the people who use the sites they create. They are so caught up in being clever with action script that they've forgotten the most basic principles of design.
There are plenty of ways to create "drop-dead gorgeous" sites that also abide by browser conventions, don't crash a Mac, and don't fuck with the preferences and minds of the end-user. Anyone who thinks they need Flash to do that, is a piss-poor designer, or an arrogant dick.
I may not agree with all of Apple's reasoning in banishing Flash, but the user-experience one is very valid. I welcome their decision to punch Flash in the face with this. I will rejoice when the Internet is a Flash-free zone.
We do NOT NEED Flash. Just as Real Player was once the best and easiest way of getting audio and video on the net, Flash can die just as fast as they did -- and for exactly the same reasons. Real did not give a fuck about their users, and neither do most people working in Flash.
Flashbock is the best piece of software development in the past 15 years. Nothing of value is lost by using it. Nothing of value is lost by using an iPad.
Okay, seriously? How many Joomla book reviews do we need? (If you answered at least 6 in the last year including today's, you apparently win the Internets today.)
This is obviously a symptom of the fact that so many books on Joomla are written. And the reason why so many books on Joomla are written is because, it just about impossible for even a reasonably technically adept person to figure Joomla out by looking at the progam and reading their documentation.
And there is the core of the problem. Joomla has terrible documentation, a very confusing way of naming things, and is not for the fainthearted. A book is pretty much essential. Which, kinda makes it not exactly FOSS as such.
The answer is no. Also, anyone using the iPad as ereader is mentally insane and hates his/her eyes.
Really? This meme again? Someone always brings this garbage up. I guarantee you using the iPad as an eReader will have zero effect on your eyes. People have spent their whole working lives reading worse-quality desktop screens with no eyesight issues. So, you hate the iPad, good for you -- but let's knock the eyesight myth shall on the head shall we? Millions of people will be using the iPad as an eReader with no ill-effects.
But yeah, the answer is no -- purely because this is an extremely inefficient way of delivering content.
"Please, not more 'Awesome Bar' stuff, its the bane of my life."
Couldn't agree more. Awesomebar is the single reason I have not, and will never, upgrade Firefox. I'm running the version previous to its addition, and am staying with it.
Were it not for the plugins, Firefox would have been deleted off my system the moment they released the version with awesomebar. Once another browser develops a plugin system as good as that available for Firefox, it will most surely be gone.
Awesomebar is symbolic for all that is wrong with Firefox. The fact that Mozilla seems to view it as a success, still touts it as a feature, just shows how totally out of touch they are with their userbase.
"The ability of Facebook to generate revenues requires the exploitation of their users data and their privacy - if they want to keep it "free" for the users."
The HELL it does. That's 100% NOT true. That may well be the spin their marketing droids spout, but it is absolutely not, in any way, true.
TV advertising remains the most lucrative form of advertising. It does not require detailed information about all its viewers. They know demographics, and they occasionally survey samples to validate that, but no personal information is needed. And this system works.
It is pretty easy to work out Facebook demographics. They do not need to target-market to this level of granularity. The only reason they are doing so, is because people at Facebook (and Google for that matter) are letting them.
There's enough eyes on Facebook that they WILL generate revenue from ads targeted at the whole Facebook demographic, rather than individually targeted ads.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that Facebook needs to hand over private information -- other than naked greed.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
It's precisely because it's so easy for random people to document made-up stuff on Wikipedia that the wikiadmins take such a hard line about removing it. Without a serious focus on removing such articles, the encyclopedia would be flooded with them.
No, it does mean what I think it means. The problem with wikipedia is that the wikiadmins CHOOSE which articles get to go, and which stay -- regardless of truth. There is a massive abuse of power. Hence the Orwell quote. Hence "hypocritical".
Every time I think of Wikipedia, I am reminded of this quote:
"It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence. [...]
Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact. [...] Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar."
George Orwell: 1984, pp 46-48.
It's really odd the wikiadmins should be complaining about someone else making up things to put on their site. All things considered, it seems somewhat hypocritical.
"The suggestion that we should stop using twitter because of spam is quite strange. Has spam stopped you from using email?"
Yes. Well, specifically, it has stopped me using Yahoo or Hotmail as an email provider.
Twitter is perhaps a useful tool for a few people, but it's far from essential. There's plenty of alternative means of communication. There's no reason anyone "needs" twitter. I've never used it, and I can't imagine any situation where I would ever do so. It's simply a fad, nothing of value will be lost by anyone stopping using it.
These are NOT independent scientists for the most part. There's clear, vested interests.
Prof Ron Oxburgh FRS -- Honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and chairman of wind energy firm Falck Renewables(amongst other climate change related positions and business interests.)
Prof Huw Davies, ETH Zürich -- Pro AGW climate change scientist.
Prof Kerry Emanuel -- Pro AGW climate change scientist, who has a successful career publishing books on the subject.
Prof Lisa Graumlich -- Pro AGW climate change scientist. Successful in getting funds to create new Climate change research units at U of A
Prof David Hand -- OK, was a big critic of the Hockey Stick graph. He may be the only independent scientist here, or he needs further investigation.
Prof Herbert Huppert -- close to the Labour Government, currently in receipt of funding to research formation of ice on Polar Ice caps.
Prof Michael Kelly -- Heavily involved with Labour Government. Chairman of the Laird Group plc, a defense contractor.
Maybe it isn't a cover-up. But it sure LOOKS like a cover-up. I doubt they could have found much more of a more biased group of scientists. A cover-up is the logical conclusion. Find some genuinely independent scientists who agree with their results, and maybe we can start trusting again.
It's pretty obvious from the Microsoft ads here that they've really needed to fire their Marketing department for a very, very long time.
From the People who brought you a brown Zune that squirted, and the Jerry Seinfeld ad, there was the MS-DOS 5 ad that was the original clue that they should have been fired.
Their products may not be better without the Marketing department, but they would surely be more successful. Microsoft: shooting itself in the foot since at least 1990.
"Fighting climate change is going to cost some billionaires a small fraction of their income, so devout Republicans are desperate to prove that nothing needs to be done. So we get the absurd notion that climate change is a liberal conspiracy."
Living in the UK, I find it fascinating that in the US it is viewed in this way. What seems to be the view of general populace in the UK, is that it's a Government/EU conspiracy designed to ensure citizen compliance, and the ability to raise taxes for essentially no real reason.
I guess that is essentially Socialist-sounding. However, Left, Right wing and centrist parties seem to be very willing to sign up to AGW, as the tax-raising abilities of "green" policy seems to be very lucrative. The Left Wing media (essentially only the Guardian and the BBC) are in favor of it, as is, essentially, the Right Wing media.
It seems to be very much a People vs Government and Big Business issue here, rather than rich billionaires trying to subvert it -- they seem to be part of the problem, as much as Government of any color.
Certainly the Climategate inquiry was widely-regarded in the UK as a whitewash, and a cover-up by the establishment, including the judiciary.
Personally, I think there is so much mud-slinging and propaganda by both the warmists and deniers, that having everything in the open, and as much legal scrutiny as possible at this point is absolutely essential.
I strongly suspect the truth to lie somewhere in between what warmists and deniers have been shouting at us for the past decade or so. We are never going to get to the truth by listening to either of these cabals without close scrutiny. The whole subject is tarnished, and from here on in, it needs to be much more transparent if any respect is to be given to anyone with a pro or con view on AGW.
The actual letter is more useful. The endagadget article is a troll -- hardly surprising considering the 4G iphone theft.
Personally, I don't care what Jobs reasons for standing up to Flash are, the net result is good for everyone. Flash is not user-oriented. It's a top-down technology. It has needed to die for a decade. Adobe are not actually to blame here really, they didn't develop Flash after all, Macromedia did -- Adobe just bought them.
And considering the mess that Google has just made over the YouTube redesign (virtually unusable now with Firefox on a Mac) -- the sooner Flash dies the better for everyone using the Internet.
Whedon fans often blame Fox Network execs for almost everything. This is wholly unfair. They have a job to do, and that's ensure that shows have enough of a broad appeal to attract enough eyes to commercials.
The mistake that Fox execs have made is letting Whedon produce shows. He's a terrible, terrible producer. He's a great writer, and a competent director, but he absolutely sucks at producing. He regularly casts average or poor actors. (Sorry folks, I know Summer Glau appeals to many, and she moves well -- but she cannot deliver a line to save her life. Nor can most of his other cast.) He hires mediocre crew who do not try new things. His art directors are awful -- most of his sets look like sets (especially Dollhouse). The camerwork and editing on his shows is late-nineties style at best. There's zero innovation, and no beauty nor truth in the camerwork. He also hires bad writers -- whomever wrote the "Beer Bad" episode of Buffy should be taken outside the WGA building and shot. It's one of the worst scripts in the history of TV.
Every single show Whedon has done has been canceled before the end of its intended run. All of them. He understands his fans well -- he has absolutely no idea how to write and produce a show for a wider audience -- something like "Lost" is far beyond his capabilities as a producer.
He is probably fine producing a show on Sci-Fi -- the audience there will forgive his poor production skills in return for mythology they can buy into. However, if he wants to succeed on network TV or Hollywood he needs to learn how to produce a show that suspends disbelief and looks truthful -- that means real actors, and a much higher standard of production values.
It is extremely unlikely this movie will get made with Whedon as director. He has zero track record of success. The "Wonder Woman" debacle will no doubt make studio heads nervous. At this point I would think he's pretty hard to insure too. He may work on the development of the feature, but I'm pretty certain he'll get replaced by someone with a proven track record before production starts.
Photoshop is the major product Adobe is making money with, and that's primarily on Macs. Could they afford to abandon the platform is the real question.
I'd guess they think the answer to that is "yes". I think they are very wrong about that, but it seems they don't value Apple custom. If they did, they wouldn't have delayed the intel versions of CS3 for a year. That definitely cost Apple in people upgrading to intel machines.
I dare say that's at least part of the reason why they are keen to kill flash. That, and the fact that Apple's ideology is all about user experience -- and Adobe's is very, very far from that.
What has this, or half the articles on the front page lately, have to do with "News for Nerds"? Has the tech world suddenly gotten so boring that Slashdot is reduced to publishing stories about "Service Monkeys"?
It's samzenpus. And it is only samzenpus. He only posts "idle" articles. Sometimes he posts them in "idle" (he did one earlier today), but most often he posts them in other sections -- even though they are always idle-quality articles.
Taco, really... enough is enough -- give smazenpus his own site. Or at the very least stop him posting articles in sections other than "idle". And get his articles out of the main RSS feed. I DO NOT ever want to read another of his articles ever, ever again. I cannot do this because his crap keeps appearing in the main feed, disguised as actual tech news.
It is only fair that we have a choice whether to read this crap or not, if it is in the RSS feed we DO NOT have the choice. FIX IT!
How in the name of Shub Internet did this make front page? Bad slashdot editors. Bad! No cookie for you.
Meet samzenpus. He specializes in this kind of crap. He refuses to let idle die the death it deserves.
If would be fine to have idle articles -- if only/. would TAKE THEM OUT OF THE MAIN RSS FEED! That way those of us who don't want to stumble upon this crap can avoid it.
It was though there was a great calming came over the Force. Like the dawning of a new age, one based on freedom and facts. One where people were free to write articles without fear of deletion and condemnation. Or edit articles without fear of biased reversion, or banishment.
Suddenly people saw the wood from the trees, and realized there was an whole Internet out there with truth and beauty in it, where jack-booted book-burners were not only not in control, but not welcome either.
And then they brought wikipedia back up again; the black flags flew, and the click of heels was once again heard around the net.
Jokes aside. Indeed, I wish I were joking. There is a lot of pure evil at the heart of Wikipedia.
Which is to say, citizens of Hong Kong technically maintain all the freedom they enjoyed under British control.
I don't think there's any "technically" here. They were under British "Control" -- the Crown appointed a Governor. The citizens of Hong Kong weren't entitled to any more or less democracy than they are now. Now, you could argue the regimes were different, although were Hong Kong under current British rule, I'm not so sure it would actually be all that different today. The UK is not a freedom-friendly state either, at present.
Slashdot Mirror
er... transporters maybe, but most people in 1966 were pretty familiar with radio... and funnily enough, even the idea of sending pictures over the air, since that's how they watched the show.
That's 90 million people (with a good income) who won't be seeing anything designed in Flash.
If that's not a good reason to stop using Flash on websites, I don't know what is. If you're an advertiser, and you use those annoying Flash ads that we all hate, then it's time to change, or die.
I may not agree with all of Apple's reasons for not using Flash, but I sure as hell love the result.
You want to know the most basic reason I despise Flash? It breaks the back button.
The fundamental problem with Flash, is that end user-experience and preferences are totally ignored. Yeah, maybe it's nice for developers, maybe it's nice for content providers -- but it totally sucks for users. Why should I bother to choose a browser and customize it, if Flash is just going to come along and ignore the buttons and menus bars, play me music I don't want to hear, autoplay video when I'm trying to read another part of a page?
The problem with developers who choose Flash, is that they don't give a damn about the people who use the sites they create. They are so caught up in being clever with action script that they've forgotten the most basic principles of design.
There are plenty of ways to create "drop-dead gorgeous" sites that also abide by browser conventions, don't crash a Mac, and don't fuck with the preferences and minds of the end-user. Anyone who thinks they need Flash to do that, is a piss-poor designer, or an arrogant dick.
I may not agree with all of Apple's reasoning in banishing Flash, but the user-experience one is very valid. I welcome their decision to punch Flash in the face with this. I will rejoice when the Internet is a Flash-free zone.
We do NOT NEED Flash. Just as Real Player was once the best and easiest way of getting audio and video on the net, Flash can die just as fast as they did -- and for exactly the same reasons. Real did not give a fuck about their users, and neither do most people working in Flash.
Flashbock is the best piece of software development in the past 15 years. Nothing of value is lost by using it. Nothing of value is lost by using an iPad.
This is obviously a symptom of the fact that so many books on Joomla are written. And the reason why so many books on Joomla are written is because, it just about impossible for even a reasonably technically adept person to figure Joomla out by looking at the progam and reading their documentation.
And there is the core of the problem. Joomla has terrible documentation, a very confusing way of naming things, and is not for the fainthearted. A book is pretty much essential. Which, kinda makes it not exactly FOSS as such.
Really? This meme again? Someone always brings this garbage up. I guarantee you using the iPad as an eReader will have zero effect on your eyes. People have spent their whole working lives reading worse-quality desktop screens with no eyesight issues. So, you hate the iPad, good for you -- but let's knock the eyesight myth shall on the head shall we? Millions of people will be using the iPad as an eReader with no ill-effects.
But yeah, the answer is no -- purely because this is an extremely inefficient way of delivering content.
Couldn't agree more. Awesomebar is the single reason I have not, and will never, upgrade Firefox. I'm running the version previous to its addition, and am staying with it.
Were it not for the plugins, Firefox would have been deleted off my system the moment they released the version with awesomebar. Once another browser develops a plugin system as good as that available for Firefox, it will most surely be gone.
Awesomebar is symbolic for all that is wrong with Firefox. The fact that Mozilla seems to view it as a success, still touts it as a feature, just shows how totally out of touch they are with their userbase.
The HELL it does. That's 100% NOT true. That may well be the spin their marketing droids spout, but it is absolutely not, in any way, true.
TV advertising remains the most lucrative form of advertising. It does not require detailed information about all its viewers. They know demographics, and they occasionally survey samples to validate that, but no personal information is needed. And this system works.
It is pretty easy to work out Facebook demographics. They do not need to target-market to this level of granularity. The only reason they are doing so, is because people at Facebook (and Google for that matter) are letting them.
There's enough eyes on Facebook that they WILL generate revenue from ads targeted at the whole Facebook demographic, rather than individually targeted ads.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that Facebook needs to hand over private information -- other than naked greed.
No, it does mean what I think it means. The problem with wikipedia is that the wikiadmins CHOOSE which articles get to go, and which stay -- regardless of truth. There is a massive abuse of power. Hence the Orwell quote. Hence "hypocritical".
It's really odd the wikiadmins should be complaining about someone else making up things to put on their site. All things considered, it seems somewhat hypocritical.
Wiener Schnitzel = Austrian. Not German. (Wien is Vienna) Nice try. Close... but not close enough.
Vaporware -- the perfect business for him to be investing in! He has some experience.
Yes. Well, specifically, it has stopped me using Yahoo or Hotmail as an email provider.
Twitter is perhaps a useful tool for a few people, but it's far from essential. There's plenty of alternative means of communication. There's no reason anyone "needs" twitter. I've never used it, and I can't imagine any situation where I would ever do so. It's simply a fad, nothing of value will be lost by anyone stopping using it.
These are NOT independent scientists for the most part. There's clear, vested interests.
Prof Ron Oxburgh FRS -- Honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and chairman of wind energy firm Falck Renewables(amongst other climate change related positions and business interests.)
Prof Huw Davies, ETH Zürich -- Pro AGW climate change scientist.
Prof Kerry Emanuel -- Pro AGW climate change scientist, who has a successful career publishing books on the subject.
Prof Lisa Graumlich -- Pro AGW climate change scientist. Successful in getting funds to create new Climate change research units at U of A
Prof David Hand -- OK, was a big critic of the Hockey Stick graph. He may be the only independent scientist here, or he needs further investigation.
Prof Herbert Huppert -- close to the Labour Government, currently in receipt of funding to research formation of ice on Polar Ice caps.
Prof Michael Kelly -- Heavily involved with Labour Government. Chairman of the Laird Group plc, a defense contractor.
Maybe it isn't a cover-up. But it sure LOOKS like a cover-up. I doubt they could have found much more of a more biased group of scientists. A cover-up is the logical conclusion. Find some genuinely independent scientists who agree with their results, and maybe we can start trusting again.
It's pretty obvious from the Microsoft ads here that they've really needed to fire their Marketing department for a very, very long time.
From the People who brought you a brown Zune that squirted, and the Jerry Seinfeld ad, there was the MS-DOS 5 ad that was the original clue that they should have been fired.
Their products may not be better without the Marketing department, but they would surely be more successful. Microsoft: shooting itself in the foot since at least 1990.
Living in the UK, I find it fascinating that in the US it is viewed in this way. What seems to be the view of general populace in the UK, is that it's a Government/EU conspiracy designed to ensure citizen compliance, and the ability to raise taxes for essentially no real reason.
I guess that is essentially Socialist-sounding. However, Left, Right wing and centrist parties seem to be very willing to sign up to AGW, as the tax-raising abilities of "green" policy seems to be very lucrative. The Left Wing media (essentially only the Guardian and the BBC) are in favor of it, as is, essentially, the Right Wing media.
It seems to be very much a People vs Government and Big Business issue here, rather than rich billionaires trying to subvert it -- they seem to be part of the problem, as much as Government of any color.
Certainly the Climategate inquiry was widely-regarded in the UK as a whitewash, and a cover-up by the establishment, including the judiciary.
Personally, I think there is so much mud-slinging and propaganda by both the warmists and deniers, that having everything in the open, and as much legal scrutiny as possible at this point is absolutely essential.
I strongly suspect the truth to lie somewhere in between what warmists and deniers have been shouting at us for the past decade or so. We are never going to get to the truth by listening to either of these cabals without close scrutiny. The whole subject is tarnished, and from here on in, it needs to be much more transparent if any respect is to be given to anyone with a pro or con view on AGW.
Thank you. Please mod parent informative.
The actual letter is more useful. The endagadget article is a troll -- hardly surprising considering the 4G iphone theft.
Personally, I don't care what Jobs reasons for standing up to Flash are, the net result is good for everyone. Flash is not user-oriented. It's a top-down technology. It has needed to die for a decade. Adobe are not actually to blame here really, they didn't develop Flash after all, Macromedia did -- Adobe just bought them.
And considering the mess that Google has just made over the YouTube redesign (virtually unusable now with Firefox on a Mac) -- the sooner Flash dies the better for everyone using the Internet.
It's like twitter with moving pictures.
Here's some footage of me taking a dump...
And it will only make it so much easier for every cheap whore celebutard to release a sex tape, or some other low-life publicity stunt.
Do NOT want.
Whedon fans often blame Fox Network execs for almost everything. This is wholly unfair. They have a job to do, and that's ensure that shows have enough of a broad appeal to attract enough eyes to commercials.
The mistake that Fox execs have made is letting Whedon produce shows. He's a terrible, terrible producer. He's a great writer, and a competent director, but he absolutely sucks at producing. He regularly casts average or poor actors. (Sorry folks, I know Summer Glau appeals to many, and she moves well -- but she cannot deliver a line to save her life. Nor can most of his other cast.) He hires mediocre crew who do not try new things. His art directors are awful -- most of his sets look like sets (especially Dollhouse). The camerwork and editing on his shows is late-nineties style at best. There's zero innovation, and no beauty nor truth in the camerwork. He also hires bad writers -- whomever wrote the "Beer Bad" episode of Buffy should be taken outside the WGA building and shot. It's one of the worst scripts in the history of TV.
Every single show Whedon has done has been canceled before the end of its intended run. All of them. He understands his fans well -- he has absolutely no idea how to write and produce a show for a wider audience -- something like "Lost" is far beyond his capabilities as a producer.
He is probably fine producing a show on Sci-Fi -- the audience there will forgive his poor production skills in return for mythology they can buy into. However, if he wants to succeed on network TV or Hollywood he needs to learn how to produce a show that suspends disbelief and looks truthful -- that means real actors, and a much higher standard of production values.
It is extremely unlikely this movie will get made with Whedon as director. He has zero track record of success. The "Wonder Woman" debacle will no doubt make studio heads nervous. At this point I would think he's pretty hard to insure too. He may work on the development of the feature, but I'm pretty certain he'll get replaced by someone with a proven track record before production starts.
Yes. And long, long, long overdue.
I'd guess they think the answer to that is "yes". I think they are very wrong about that, but it seems they don't value Apple custom. If they did, they wouldn't have delayed the intel versions of CS3 for a year. That definitely cost Apple in people upgrading to intel machines.
I dare say that's at least part of the reason why they are keen to kill flash. That, and the fact that Apple's ideology is all about user experience -- and Adobe's is very, very far from that.
I saw the headline, and immediately thought that Google Earth had finally got around to photographing Falkirk
It's samzenpus. And it is only samzenpus. He only posts "idle" articles. Sometimes he posts them in "idle" (he did one earlier today), but most often he posts them in other sections -- even though they are always idle-quality articles.
Taco, really... enough is enough -- give smazenpus his own site. Or at the very least stop him posting articles in sections other than "idle". And get his articles out of the main RSS feed. I DO NOT ever want to read another of his articles ever, ever again. I cannot do this because his crap keeps appearing in the main feed, disguised as actual tech news.
It is only fair that we have a choice whether to read this crap or not, if it is in the RSS feed we DO NOT have the choice. FIX IT!
Meet samzenpus. He specializes in this kind of crap. He refuses to let idle die the death it deserves.
/. would TAKE THEM OUT OF THE MAIN RSS FEED! That way those of us who don't want to stumble upon this crap can avoid it.
If would be fine to have idle articles -- if only
It was though there was a great calming came over the Force. Like the dawning of a new age, one based on freedom and facts. One where people were free to write articles without fear of deletion and condemnation. Or edit articles without fear of biased reversion, or banishment.
Suddenly people saw the wood from the trees, and realized there was an whole Internet out there with truth and beauty in it, where jack-booted book-burners were not only not in control, but not welcome either.
And then they brought wikipedia back up again; the black flags flew, and the click of heels was once again heard around the net.
Jokes aside. Indeed, I wish I were joking. There is a lot of pure evil at the heart of Wikipedia.
I don't think there's any "technically" here. They were under British "Control" -- the Crown appointed a Governor. The citizens of Hong Kong weren't entitled to any more or less democracy than they are now. Now, you could argue the regimes were different, although were Hong Kong under current British rule, I'm not so sure it would actually be all that different today. The UK is not a freedom-friendly state either, at present.