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Wink Chosen to Receive Noble Piece Prize

Posted by timothy on Tue May 03, 2005 07:49 PM
from the aptly-named dept.
It's funny. Laugh.
Phil Shapiro writes "Wink, a beautifully written free program for creating Flash-format animated tutorials has been chosen to receive a Noble Piece Prize, the prize that honors the craftsmanship of Alfred Noble, who worked at the Jacquard Loom factory in France. Previous winners of this prize include the Digital Bicycle web site."
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  • Wink, Wink (Score:5, Funny)

    by Vombatus (777631) on Tuesday May 03 2005, @07:51PM (#12427465)
    Nudge, nudge

    Say no more, say no more

  • Noble Piece Prize? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Vombatus (777631) on Tuesday May 03 2005, @07:55PM (#12427495)
    Surely this will infringe the trademark of the Nobel Peace Prize
      • It was a joke, because the blurb said "Noble" instead of "Nobel." You could have been funny by saying, "Surely, it wouldn't be very NOBLE of the committee to sue, wouldn't it?" but you didn't!

  • There's no way this is true... (Score:5, Funny)

    by pdevor (603443) <seekingleverage@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 03 2005, @07:56PM (#12427505) Homepage
    ...oh wait... The Piece Prize... Wow. It occurs to me that it is a highly humorous name for a prize. I am unable to contain myself. Really!

  • I nominiate (Score:5, Funny)

    by cove209 (681558) on Tuesday May 03 2005, @08:03PM (#12427556)
    I nominate the guy that invented shirts for chicks that show off their belly's. Now THAT is worth an award.
    • Fair enough, but their use should be strictly licensed. They're nice on Britney lookalikes, but I've seen too many fat chavettes [chavscum.com] with their guts hanging over their waistbands.
          • Hell, try 13
            Jerry Lee, you better leave your cousin alone, y'here. Next thang you know, other mu-si-shuns will be going after little kids 'cause of you!

            And stop that darn postin' on slush-dot. Thet good ole boy Al Gore hasn't invented the intarweb thing yet! You gonna get us ALL in a heap of dog shit, you keep that up.

              • Y'all better watch it, or I'll get Tammy Faye to sit on your face. You'll be prayin' a might hard then, boy! That'll put the fear of God in you. Yessirree!

                And them wimen, t'weren't no hookers. No siree. They was just ministering to my needs. And if you done seen Tammy Faye, you KNOW that, truthfully, I can say that I am truly grateful for the bounciful, I mean bootyful, I mean, ... never you mind!

                You KNOW the good book done say its a sin to sleep with a beast! That's why I done what I did. That's why th

  • Standards? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not only self-promotion on part of the author, but a completely irrelevant non-article and intentionally misleading to boot. I hope I'm not alone in expecting a higher standard from the slashdot editors.

  • What kind of bollocks is this? (Score:4, Informative)

    by WouldIPutMYRealNameO (874377) on Tuesday May 03 2005, @08:09PM (#12427613)
    There is no article, no such thing as a Nobel "Piece" Prize, no mention of any such prize on Wink's homepage.
    So basically no evidence of anything at all. Is this whole article a Troll to see how many slashdotters will bite? Did the editors check a single link?
    This article can be summed up as "No content here, but I have some links - Clicky clicky clicky please!!"
    This is the most inane thing I have ever seen.

    If you will excuse me, I'm off to make up some prizes to award to random people.

    • Re:What kind of bollocks is this? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg (145172) on Tuesday May 03 2005, @08:42PM (#12427856)
      " There is no article, no such thing as a Nobel "Piece" Prize . . ."

      Of course there isn't. It's the Noble Piece Prize.

      As in "really great bit of work." Noble Piece. Get it?

      And of course it exists, it's just been announced right here on Slashdot. With winners and everything. Yeah, Phil Shapiro made it up, but, that's how awards come to be you know. Someone just makes them up and starts handing them out.

      They don't come down from the mountain engraved on stone by the hand of God or something. Someone, like maybe Alfred Nobel, just decides to give 'em out.

      I have made up and awarded a number of prizes in my day mayself. They're perfectly legitimate prizes. Like the "Best Drive of the Day" trophy at my local kart track.

      I'm off to make up some prizes to award to random people.

      Exactly! Just like Nobel and Pulitzer did. Although awarding them at random takes some of the value out of them. I suggest you develop some real criteria first. Then they'll really mean something.

      You have an "Authority Thang," don't you?

      KFG
      • The heathens. Next thing you know, they'll be saying there's no such thing as the ig Nobel Awards [improb.com]

        Just in case, though .. the2004 winners [improb.com] were

        MEDICINE

        Steven Stack of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James Gundlach of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA, for their published report "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide."

        PHYSICS

        Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottawa, and Michael Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Haskins Laboratory, for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping.

        PUBLIC HEALTH

        Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University, for investigating the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.

        CHEMISTRY

        The Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert ordinary tap water into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers.

        ENGINEERING

        Donald J. Smith and his father, the late Frank J. Smith, of Orlando Florida, USA, for patenting the combover (U.S. Patent #4,022,227).

        LITERATURE

        The American Nudist Research Library of Kissimmee, Florida, USA, for preserving nudist history so that everyone can see it.

        PSYCHOLOGY

        Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University, for demonstrating that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else -- even a woman in a gorilla suit.

        ECONOMICS

        The Vatican, for outsourcing prayers to India.

        PEACE

        Daisuke Inoue of Hyogo, Japan, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.

        BIOLOGY

        Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia, Lawrence Dill of Simon Fraser University [Canada], Robert Batty of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus Whalberg of the University of Aarhus [Denmark], and Hakan Westerberg of Sweden's National Board of Fisheries, for showing that herrings apparently communicate by farting.

        Even I couldn't make this shit up (well, maybe I could, if I was given a research grant like most of these people were)
    • If you will excuse me, I'm off to make up some prizes to award to random people.

      So you're the one responsible for the MTV Awards!!
    • Did the editors check a single link?

      See foot icon - insert in mouth icon.
  • Stupid ad blcoker didn't seem to catch this ad, better go write the extension people.

    (I know its free ware, but it is still a product placement I didn't need)

  • Uh... spam on Slashdot? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ta bu shi da yu (687699) on Tuesday May 03 2005, @08:16PM (#12427671) Homepage
    Isn't this getting a little close to spamming? I mean, the app might be good, but the prize seems dodgy.

  • What the heck? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Geoffreyerffoeg (729040) on Tuesday May 03 2005, @08:22PM (#12427713)
    If you read the description of the prize, it seems like it was created by Phil Shapiro, the submitter of the story.

    So can I create my own Nebula Peas prize and give it to some random free software project, like Hebcal [sf.net] or something, and get it posted on the front page of Slashdot?

    (No offense against Hebcal; I just picked the first nonfamous project that I saw browsing SourceForge.)

    • Re:What the heck? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Devoid Josh (848749) on Tuesday May 03 2005, @08:31PM (#12427774) Homepage
      An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff. -- Adlai Stevenson

      Dont you just love the quotes at the bottom of the article? I know I do.
    • Such is the wonder and mystery of Slashdot. Think about it. Would you really prefer another SCO/Groklaw rehash of someone's seeze in a Utah courtroom three days ago?

      Such is the infinite inscrutability of Slashdot.

  • I hope to sum up the reaction from all non-posters (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2005, @08:28PM (#12427759)
    ...
  • It says a lot about Slashdot that my thought was not "Here's at least an attempt at interesting wordplay" but "OMG, it's narrowly a new low for spelling". I had to read most of the summary to be sure it wasn't actually a typo.

    (Remember, Slashdot, thou art mortal.)

  • wink is great (Score:5, Interesting)

    by havaloc (50551) * on Tuesday May 03 2005, @08:54PM (#12427962) Homepage
    All joking beside (peace/piece), Wink is a great utility and is a must download. It's great for creating tutorials on how to do things on computers.
    • Wink is a great utility and is a must download.

      Unless, for example, you're on PPC: it's x86 only.

      • Re:wink is great (Score:5, Funny)

        by vrai (521708) on Wednesday May 04 2005, @02:57AM (#12429678)
        If only there was some way of distributing software that allowed the end-user to build it for their machine; whatever the architecture may be. Clearly America must focus the minds of its finest Computer Scientists on solving this, apparently insurmountable, problem.
    • It may be a "free program"; too bad it's not free software.

      Binary distribution only. The accompanying license states, in part:

      No form of decompilation/reverse engineering/disassembling parts or whole of the software be done.

  • I could have sworn this was a dupe... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by antispam_ben (591349) on Tuesday May 03 2005, @09:51PM (#12428308) Journal
    "New Awards To Compete With Nobel Prizes"
    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/0 3/1712250 [slashdot.org]
    Are these two stories, Nobel Prizes/Noble Piece Prize, appearing the same day a coincidence? I think not.

    The Biggest Lie Of Science:
    "The Piece Prize will be waiting for you backstage after you give your conference paper."

  • Wink is a nice app for Linux (Score:5, Informative)

    by nacs (658138) on Tuesday May 03 2005, @09:51PM (#12428310) Journal
    I realize that most of the comments are going to be jokes because of the tone of the submission but Wink itself is a very useful application.

    It's similar to Macromedia Captivate and the dozens of other Flash-output screen recording tools available but what sets this app apart from the others in my opinion is it's support for Linux (it's available for Windows too) and it's price (free).

    The only other app that I've used that does screen recording and outputs Flash files is the vnc2swf [unixuser.org] console based program. While vnc2swf is quite good at full motion recording it's editing capability is virtually nonexistent (there is a program called edit_vnc2swf but it's console based at least right now).

    Wink has an excellent GUI, is 100% free ( I made a voluntary donation to the developer via Paypal and encourage others to do the same), allows you to do manual or full-motion (timed) captures, and has very good support for Linux. It's definitely an app worth downloading.

    (Note: I'm not affiliated in any way with Wink--just a happy user).
      • - KKK -...trouble handling colour separations...

        But I thought color separation was what it was all about?

        ...tending to render large areas colourless...

        On second thought, maybe it works as designed after all.

    • Noble Piece versus Nobel Peace? Talk about a cheap ripoff. The article needs a little note like "NOT to be confused with the actually famous Nobel Peace Prize."
    • After the the prize was given Wangari Maathai, I lost all respect for what the Nobel prize stands for. This..lunatic claims the AIDs virus was engineered for the sole purpose of destroying the black race. Pffttttt, please.

      And I thought "I" wore the tinfoil hat around here. Where is my Nobel prize?

      I would post links, but I thought it would be best for the slashdot crowed to have fun with Google instead.

      • Re:You may be wrong... (Score:5, Informative)

        by tomhudson (43916) <<ac.nortoediv> <ta> <nosduh>> on Tuesday May 03 2005, @08:39PM (#12427835) Homepage Journal
        Why is everyone saying there's no link to the article (which is an obvious joke)?
        Alfred Noble worked as a loom designer in the Jacquard loom factory in France in the early 1800's. He was known for constantly sharing with his peers better ways of doing things and for the beauty of his inventions. When people tried to give him credit, he always passed along credit to others.

        When Noble was focusing on a particular piece of ass, or task, he would often stay after work to get it just right. His reputation for producing things of beauty and inventiveness caused his factory co-workers to label anything beautiful or inventive as a "Noble piece."

        One day the owner of the factory suggested that an annual prize be given to anyone who created something of great beauty or inventiveness. In honor of Alfred Noble, this prize came to be known as the Noble Piece Prize.

        When Alfred Noble found out about this prize, he was so overjoyed he exclaimed, "That's dynamite."

        The owner of the factory was so happy with the orgasmic development of the Noble Piece Prize, he told his factory workers that he would seek to have the prize given annually by the king.

        Alfred Noble, who never said much, spoke up. "I'd much prefer that this prize not be given by a king, but that it given by any contributing member of our community. To me, the honor of giving the prize ought to be as great as the honor of receiving it -- and the people best suited to choose the prize giver are community members themselves. They know. Ask them."

        He walked over to one of his co-workers and holding his forearm said, "Rudy, here, has dignity." He walked over to another co-worker and holding her forearm said, "Elizabeth, here, has dignity and hooters."

        "Don't you see, it's dignity that matters, not status?"

        A hush befell the factory floor. Even the looms fell quiet at the poignancy of the moment.

        "And we cannot give this prize annually. Our days on Earth are limited. We must give this prize more often, for beauty and inventiveness exist everywhere if we just look for them. Twice a year is how often this prize must be given.

        And we must have other Noble prizes beyond the Piece Prize. Do we limit our homage to one another because of words?"

        And such is the origins of the Noble Piece Prize, which honors two people twice a year. Today the prize is most often given to people working on public-spirited software projects -- people who embody the spirit of Alfred Noble. By tradition, the giver of the Noble Piece Prize has no connection to software creation, but is a person who embodies great dignity in the community.

        By all accounts, there can be no greater honor than the Noble Piece Prize.

        February 2, 2005
        "... all we are saying ... is give piece a chance ..." just doesn't work.
        • That's just background information on the Noble Piece Prize. The article is supposed to talk about Wink being chosen to recieve the Noble Piece Prize.

    • Re:Piece? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Golias (176380)
      No, the Nobel prizes are the ones which have one for Peace.

      This is the Noble Piece Prize, which has zero to do with the Nobel foundation in Zurich, and therefore not actually a big deal.
      • Pointless? I think not. In fact, I've just granted this story the first ever "SYFer No Bell Prize." I'll get a press release out RSN and I'll look forward to reading about it in Slashdot next month (maybe twice).

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