Slashdot Mirror
OS Stats Removed From Google's Zeitgeist
Kelly McNeill writes "Google's Zeitgeist service is sometimes used by news sources as a resource to generate install-base (don't call it market share!), statistics for operating systems. osViews contacted Google to bring some clarity to questionable aspects of the OS statistic, to which Google said that Zeitgeist is only a fun search inquiry resource and should not be used to generate statistical information. A couple days after that inquiry, we found that Google has since removed the OS stats from the Zeitgeist service."
First of all, it's OSTG. Name change happened about three weeks ago.
I'm aware of that. Most people know the company as OSDN. I'll eventually update the sig.
Slashdot is not a news site, it is a blog
"News for nerds. Stuff that matters." Slashdot doesn't post michael's daily life journals or roblimo's latest thoughts on marriage. It posts tech news submissions from readers (often without proofreading or actually reading what they link to).
The people who have editorial control over these sites are highly professional and are constantly guarding the integrity of each OSTG site.
Highly professional? This site is infamous for completely ignoring the suggestions and ideas of subscribers. Often, reposts, major typos, and false articles are posted despite subscribers letting the editor know about their mistakes before the story hits the front page. Worse yet, editors like michael have been known to quietly modbomb entire threads that are critical of them or something they posted.
Little of our work is specifically anti-Microsoft.
There are more Microsoft articles posted every day than anything involving OSS or OSS projects (like Linux). Most of the other topics are under the mysteriously broad "IT" topic or involve software patents or SCO. There were about three SP2 articles posted within two days. The majority of Microsoft articles are completely anti-Microsoft. Often, most of the resulting comments will be criticisms of the bias of the submission. I doubt the editors read comments very much these days, because sentiment has changed. People have even complained about the juvenile cracked window icon for Windows stories. In Slashdot's haste to bash Microsoft at every opportunity, they even reposted the "Microsoft pays for translation mistakes" article while it was still on the front page. It was subsequently removed, but plenty of people saw it and laughed.
But it's easier to just pass us all off as a bunch of unprofessional hacks who enjoy manipulating innocent readers into believing our sick and twisted agenda. Because you believe everything you read and can't think critically or make decisions for yourself, right? Gosh I hope so -- otherwise it's curtains for online journalists.
The majority of the community comes here for its tech news. Whether or not you choose to ignore that, it is the truth. When they post articles like "Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China," you mislead people into forming a viewpoint that is plainly biased. There is an amusing irony to the idea of a website that often posts submissions with an anti-corporate slant being owned by a company, running banner ads, and selling subscriptions. On top of that, your articles--especially Microsoft articles--are often completely inacccurate. To this day, you still get people who think WinFS has been "cancelled" from Longhorn, when it wasn't. But there was a Slashdot article posted that said it was. So everyone regurgitates the statement in enough +5 posts to become "truth."