Interesting Links for 14-06-2012

[andrewducker]

• Coventry launches electric bus services
  (tags: uk buses electricity )
• Goodfellas mobster Henry Hill dies aged 69
  (tags: movies mafia )
• The BBC block UK access to some pages produced by BBC Worldwide. What the fucking fuck?
  (tags: uk bbc EpicFail )
• Some interesting discussion/analysis of the new top level domain applications.
  (tags: internet google amazon )
• An editor explains how ebook licensing works, and why you can only buy most ebooks in some countries.
  (tags: publishing ebooks )
• Is the Guardian the most bigoted newspaper in Britain?
  (tags: uk media guardian bigotry palestine israel )
• What happens when the DRM on digital projectors kicks in (a terrible tool-chain)
  (tags: drm copyright movies digital )
• 35mm Film is About to Die – Studios Plan to Go With All Digital Projection by 2014
  (tags: digital cinema )
• The govt’s work programmes are pure exploitation: here’s the evidence (anyone got some counter-evidence?)
  (tags: welfare work uk politics )
• Skype to feature massive in-call ads. Microsoft tries to sell this as a _good_ thing.
  (tags: skype microsoft advertising )
• Chinese mindfulness meditation improves brain white matter and mood.
  (tags: psychology emotion brains meditation )
• Windows Phone market share expected to surpass Apple's iOS in 2016 (expected, in this case, by analysts on crack)
  (tags: windows microsoft mobile_phones apple )

Comments

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

They're blocking stories about vacuum trains?

[andrewducker]

Accessing that story in the UK gets you:
"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com."

I'm sure there's complication over how to get people from the UK to pay for stuff which isn't covered by the license fee, but just blocking people seems dumb.

[makyo.livejournal.com]

35mm Film is About to Die – Studios Plan to Go With All Digital Projection by 2014
This makes me a little sad - my wife and I met while projecting 35mm film at our university film society.

Is the Guardian the most bigoted newspaper in Britain?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Wow, Robin Shepherd has written a lot of anti-Muslim/pro-Israel stuff.

I feel like the music stopped, and all the people with anti-Muslim opinions and all the people with anti-Jewish opinions sat down, but there weren't enough chairs in one place, so they ended up confusingly scattered across the political spectrum. And now I don't understand the political landscape any more :) (In truth, this is mostly my awareness, not a change in real life :))

Generally left/liberal circles, prominently including the guardian, definitely have an awful anti-Israel sentiment that spills over into anti-Jewish sentiment, which is rather awful.

But also, Israel has done some really really awful things to Palestinians, and if there's a "wipe Israel away" sentiment, that's pretty inevitable. And I don't agree with Hamas' rhetoric, but I'm not sure they can be ignored out of being a problem, and their main complaint is probably widely shared in palestine. (I might agree publishing it uncritically in the guardian is bad, if that's what happened.)

[andrewducker]

In the future, couples will have to meet while working out how to hook up projectors to laptops :->

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

especially since I just read it for free.

[hano.livejournal.com]

I'd be very wary of anything written by Robin Shepherd and especially anything published in The Commentator. It's a right wing rag run for and by a bunch of increasingly lunatic libertarians, with an agenda to attack the state at every opportunity. They *hate* the Guardian with a real passion, and love nothing more than discrediting it whenever they can.

[andrewducker]

I'm happy to be wary of them - but I'd much rather have an actual rebuttal of what they said, with evidence, if such a thing is possible. I generally prefer argument based on facts, rather than who the arguer is.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Yes, but a comment piece like that will pick, choose and skews its facts.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Are there adverts on that page?

It might be that it's not so much about preventing UK people from seeing the content, but from being subjected to ads. There's maybe some stuff in the BBC's rules about not ever using ads in the UK.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

That picture they have at the top of the piece... it doesn't exactly lend itself to a fair discussion of facts.

[andrewducker]

Every comment piece, and 95% of all reporting chooses and skews its facts.

If the facts are incorrect then they deserve rebuttal.

[andrewducker]

Is it a photoshop? If it's a picture of a Hamas supporter at a Hamas rally then it goes to support the thrust of the article.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Which facts are you referring to?

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

Ooh that sounded confrontational - I just mean I'm confused as to who's rebuttal of what you mean.

[zz]

Is the Guardian the most bigoted newspaper in Britain?

his argument seems to be that because hamas are suboptimal ranging to evil, their members/leaders shouldn't be allowed a voice ever? wtf?

[naath.livejournal.com]

Is the guardian the MOST bigoted... well, I dunno; the Guardian are often anti-Israeli-government/pro-Palestinian-statehood which doesn't have to be bigotry but that does seem to spill over into being anti-semitic unless policed very very carefully, and I don't think the Guardian are very careful about their policing.

On the other hand many other newspapers spew disgusting bigotry too. The Daily Mail for instance. Comparing one sort of bigotry to another sort is pretty foolish.

[andrewducker]

There's a difference between banning people from speaking, and actively giving them a forum for their views.

I'm all for (for instance) Neo-Nazis being allowed to print leaflets. I am not in favour of my local newspaper giving them a page to talk about themselves.

[andrewducker]

As in, if the facts in the article are incorrect then they should be rebutted.

Saying "Pieces like this skew their facts." or "The people that publish on this site are lunatics." isn't actually an argument against anything this piece says. If the piece says things that are untrue, then they should be rebutted. If the things it says are true, then they should be believed. Anything else is just handwaving.

[andrewducker]

Oh you weren't confrontational at all. At least not by the standards I'm used to :->

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

And the caption that it's a Guardian reader?

[andrewducker]

Clearly very silly?

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Same here.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I've spent too long trying to write a coherent reply to this.

I don't think any of the actual facts are in question. The guardian did publish that article. The guardian's stance on Israel is somewhat racist. The Hamas documents do say all those things about wiping Israel out.

But I think he's trying to smuggle in non-factual premises like "obviously everyone agrees that publishing that article was totally unforgiveable, it's so obvious I don't even need to justify it". Or "the guardian giving a platform to Haniyeh is characteristic of their level of bigotry and everything else they say is suspect."

For instance, wikipedia says Haniyeh is "a senior political leader of Hamas and one of two disputed Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority". The article mentions the first (with possibly a mild exaggeration), but not the second. Is publishing an article by someone who's been a terrorist leader AND a democratically elected prime minister better than publishing an article by a terrorist leader? I think most people would say it's a lot more understandable, because whether the views are heinious or not, if they're widely represented in the population, they almost certainly will have to be engaged with somehow, not just ignored out of existance.

For instance, he says "Is the guardian the most bigoted newspaper?" He obviously wants to implicate the guardian's bigotedness as much as possible. I agree the guardian is rather racist about Israel. But I'm not sure that's clearly worse that people (such as Robin Shepherd himself) who automatically assume Muslim citizens of Britian are a dangerous reactionary problem to be fixed, rather than possibly equal members of society with everyone else.

For instance, the caption to the picture implies that the guardian probably agree with everything in the Hamas agenda, but even if they're wrong to be sympathetic to Hamas and very anti-Israel, I think that's unlikely.

Unfortunately, this sort of implication can be made faster than it can be rebutted, which makes talking about it especially time-consuming.

If we ignore Robin Shepherd, would you characterise the main question as "was the guardian wrong to publish something by Haniyeh?" I think it quite probably was, but I'm not positive.

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

A thousand times this.