dark cave

Knowledge must remain free (as in freedom)

February 20th, 2007 at 06:06pm dark

Yesterday, I watched Once Upon a Time in America, the last movie by the Italian director Sergio Leone and surely one among the greatest films of all times. The plot was very interesting, so the scene choice. At the end of the ~ 229 minutes of play, I felt satisfied, but rather curious about the name of the young actress that played the role of the little Deborah. Expecially her eyes remined me something familiar, but I wasn’t unable to further dig into my memory.

So, where’s the problem? I fired up Firefox and pointed it to en.wikipedia.org. A quick search led me to the page of the movie. And there was the answer: the mysterious actress was Jennifer Connelly, that I like particularly after her appearances in Requiem for a Dream (I simply love that movie, and I suggest you to watch Pi, the first movie by its director, Darren Aronofsky) and A Beautiful Mind. While I was thinking about the ease with which I satisfied my need of knowledge, a small but very appealing (for me) block of text drew my attention:

PAL editions of the DVD have a running time of 219 minutes (and 48 seconds). This is due entirely to PAL speed-up.

There’s no need to explain how much I was eager to know more about this technical question, so immediately I followed the link. And there I found the explanation (that I won’t write here, because I would use the same words used on the Wikipedia article), simply explained and cleverly displayed by the attached images.

What would have happened if Wikipedia didn’t exist? I wouldn’t have found the name of the actress and I wouldn’t have found that explanation about PAL speed-up. In short, my knowledge would have been limited.

Knowledge is like software, that on the other hand is like sex: it’s better when it’s free (as in freedom).

Entry Filed under: English, Free (as in freedom) thoughts