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Slashback: Cradle, Indiscriminancy, Multiplicity
Power the hot tub with compost, remember the soy insulation. andyrossmeissl writes "William McDonough's book Cradle to Cradle was reviewed favorably back in 2002, and now its theories about making things sustainably will be put into practice in the C2C Home design competition. The judges (McDonough is on the panel) will present 9 awards and actually build four of the projects on sites in Roanoke, Virginia. Wanna try your hand? Students and professionals should register by November 15."
About that blind-date opportunity ... Alex Salkever, Tech Editor of BusinessWeek online, wrote with a response to the recent story about the dilemma Google faces in trying to make money from its Google News service:
"There is another side to this that I think is equally important, namely, that Google is undermining the news business with its algorithm-based story selection.It's clear to a journalist that this system was designed by someone who has no idea what's important in the news. While it may nail the top headlines, Google News can't do anything but that. There is no consideration of comprehensiveness of a story at one site over another. Often they cite bizarre news sources for stories way out of their specialty. Why else would we be seeing Al Jazeera as the top listing for a story on Kobe Bryant? The truth is, Web search in the Google model is a poor way to aggregate useful news. It's a great way to figure out what site posted news first but not much more than that.
All of which would be fine except that so many people go to Google for news that they have come to think its actually a really good source for news. It is, if you are searching for news. But if you are reading their home page it's wildly erratic. This ultimately hurts news outlets who work very hard to put together the best stories and draw traffic to their pages. Let me put it to you this way: Would you want the Google guys to set you up on a blind date? Guess what? They already did."
Fountain pens are still ineffective, at least. anomaly writes "I was quite displeased to see that the Kryptonite U locks were incredibly vulnerable to the venerable BIC pen.
I happened to be in the bike shop today and noticed that Kryptonite is sponsoring a lock replacement program. Now's the time to get that lock replaced with a more secure one - before the thieves make off with your bike. Kudos to Kryptonite for responding, and quickly."
Processor envy strikes hard. Adam writes "Orion Multisystems, the company which introduced two Linux-based multiprocessor supercomputers at the end of August, has begun selling the DT-12 Cluster Workstation online. The company claims that this 12-processor unit has a peak performance of 36 Gflops and is small enough to fit on a desk."
I prefer Google News myself. At least I can get news from a variety of sources, not just the local TV station. It would be better though if it filtered out duplicate articles (i.e. ones copied straight from the Associated Press or other wire sources).
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
One of the things I have learned from reading Google News is just how few people are doing any acutal reporting. The vast majority of major new organizations are just repeating what they get off of the AP wire, which you might as well read directly. When Google really shines though, is when it finds those out of the way news sources that actually break a non-AP story. During the US military engagements in the middle east, Al-Jezera is often more intelligent than the regurgitated spin releases vomited from CBS/FOX/etc. Google also give you the opportunity to compare coverage on a wide range of sites, aggregating the gamut of viewpoints. I'm sorry, but Google is only "hurting" more established channels by providing more direct access to the fringe press. For the fringes, and those of us who enjoy the range of analysis, this is a huge boon.
But Google News is showing bias. And it's starting to become intentional.
John
While it may nail the top headlines, Google News can't do anything but that. There is no consideration of comprehensiveness of a story at one site over another.
What a silly point. Google News doesn't try to tell you what to read. It gathers the most commonly reported events into headlines and intends the user to sort through them. As a way of organizing news reports, it's unparalleled. Just like traditional Google Search, it doesn't make the choice of resource for you (that's what our discernment is for), it merely organizes your choices so they are accessible. Perhaps from the perspective of a traditional journalist, the idea of a broad range of news sources at the fingertips of the reader rather blind dependency on a few well-known outlets is worrying because it threatens the old way of doing things. Personally, I think more accessibility and more choice for the reader will only make online news more competitive and allow quality articles outside of the conventional vendors to show themselves more easily.
They already know how to do it. Linguistic anomalies and other factors can skew Google News results. When you're talking about human events, there's no way to remove bias.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This ultimately hurts news outlets who work very hard to put together the best stories and draw traffic to their pages.
If Google News is that much worse than traditional news outlets "working very hard", then those traditional news outlets won't have anything to fear, will they? If Google News is so "erratic", then obviously readers will flock to the traditional news outlets, won't they? It's funny how these comments were made by somebody from the traditional news outlets, isn't it?
Let me put it to you this way: Would you want the Google guys to set you up on a blind date? Guess what? They already did.
>Looks around< err... no, I'm pretty sure they didn't. What a stupid thing to say.
Often they cite bizarre news sources for stories way out of their specialty. Why else would we be seeing Al Jazeera as the top listing for a story on Kobe Bryant?
So? I am smart enough to click on the part that says, for example, "..and 650 more.." and look for sources that make more sense. I like having the option to read five or six or 50 different write-up's of the same story. I can tell when the first source or two are inappropriate and I can move on. I suspect the person who wrote in prefers the CNN or FOX, etc. format of deciding what should be the news for the day. Google dumps it all out there and in quantity. For a news junky, I think Google is great! I do read the CNN online news as well but sometimes I am astounded at the difference between CNN's version (which can lean left just as the Fox version can lean right) versus the BBC version or one of the India newspapers.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Does he have any idea how insulting that is? Why do so many journalists not only want to decide what the news is, they also want you to get it from certain sources only and they don't want you think critically about the news or the source. Well, that's how I feel, anyway. Bastards.
http://www.busyweather.com/
While I understand his point, is that not the reason people go to Google for news (eg: to avoid or distribute human bias)? This just sounds to me like he is angry that people are not reading the news the way he wants them to.
This is what Salkever's statements sound like to me.
Quote:
Translation:Quote:
Translation:Quote:
Translation:I do not use Google News, but at least on the surface, it is a system that appears to be unfriendly to the obvious and harmful bias of US news sources. It also seems to me that reading a bunch of news from totally random websites might actually contribute to more open mindedness (something I, for one, would like to see more of in the US and in the rest of the world).
I think the simple point is: Readers are responsible for picking and choosing what they believe out of the news. While this has always been true, Google News is making it more obvious by sprinkling, sometimes very liberally, the news with opinions that are not standard within the news industry (and some opinions that are just downright absurd). This is probably a good thing.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Or that it took a major media blitz and a class-action suit to get them off their asses? Sounds rather like the old "Hmm.. which one of these will cost us more?" discussion was had around the boardroom table. If this could have been swept under the rug, it would have been. Trust me.
Does it NOT occur to anyone here that if an ideological group can purchase up a bunch of "news sources"/media outlets, they can control what is "most commonly reported"?
It occured to me, but I dismissed it. The fact is that no single ideological group controls what is commonly reported across the globe. Maybe in the U.S., but not across the world. There is incredible diversity in news coverage, in levels of bias, and in ideologies driving that bias. In Google, al-Jazeera and CNN offer competing takes on issues. Sans Google News and fall back on "sources you trust" and dissenting views are harder to find. That's because in a single country, or a single neighbourhood, a single ideological group certainly can control news. Hence if, as the author suggested, we depend on so-called "reliable sources," we can expect far more one-sidedness and single-outlook control over the news than we would encounter in Google News.
You suggest that a single ideological group has the power to ignore events and hence determine what constitutes news and what is "most commonly reported" and as such what appears on Google's headlines. It's a serious issue, but you seem to be whinging in the wrong direction. Google News is part of the solution, not part of the problem of conventional outlets' stranglehold. It submerges any given country's conventional regional sources in a great variety of alternative perspectives. (The Internet gets credit for all that variety, of course, but Google makes it actually available. Say what you like, but "convenience" is crucial to whether information can actually be digested or whether it just overwhelms and is ignored.) It's not perfect, but it's better.
Now if Google News made some attempt to integrate blogs, then we'd have a lot of variety...
I really don't feel that Google News does a very good job of picking the best articles on a subject to make the front page.
This argument is applicable to any Google search. Google doesn't "pick" the best news articles or search results, it basically sorts them by popularity. If a lot of organizations report on a particular subject, those articles rise to the top of the page. If an article discusses a particular search result more deeply, that article rises to the top of its search results.
Maybe it is just really hard to properly organize news.
When you can give us a workable definition of "properly", I'll consider your arguments. As it is, even longtime news editors often have trouble deciding which articles deserve headline-page-one status and which ones ought to be bumped to the bottom. It's ultimately a matter of what one person considers important--except for Google, which considers what several hundred people consider to be important. It may not be better, but it's certainly no worse.