17 years?? It says right there in that same article that the military dictatorship of Myanmar (nee Burma) first started using armed troops to suppress anti-government protests in 1974.
But I am of the opinion that too many journalists think science is just another "report the facts" game where they can spend an hour, or even a week researching a science topic and then writing something that actually communicates something, without understanding how it actually ties into anything else, or even have any idea what scientific knowledge is at all. That's where bad science journalism comes from.
Indeed that does sound bad. Which writers are you talking about? They probably don't read Slashdot, so you can go ahead and name names.
Finally getting MythTV working with my remote, configuring my video drivers properly, and getting my SPDIF audio working were the final nails for me. Now Linux can do pretty much everything that Windows Media Center was doing for me before. I haven't rebooted from my Ubuntu partition in weeks. I find I'm far more efficient in this OS (even with the GL Desktop disabled!)
If Microsoft switched to a support model...they wouldn't need to force out a new product on a regular basis to make money. Instead, we'd be seeing 'XP 2.0' coming out with incremental improvements and a whole slew of new support docs, training, and tech certificates.
Except "incremental improvements" don't generally require a lot of additional support. What do you do when Joe Blow has pretty much figured out how to use Windows? What do you charge for then?
I don't know much about the background of Woodward and Bernstein, but I'd imagine they have some background in doing investigations, or learned it along the way.
That would be an earmark of a good writer, don't you think? However, the point stands that neither is a politician, so by your standards their observations about the conduct of the Nixon administration should hold no water.
Journalists may be good at writing about the actually people involved in science, but the ones without a background in science stink at writing about science.
Again, for someone who claims to be interested in science, your observations don't seem to be that grounded in empiricism. For example, I'm holding in my hands right now a copy of The Best American Science Writing 2007, edited by Gina Kolata, and though not all of the bios of the writers in question reference their education, only a handful cite science or medicine degrees. Most have long backgrounds as writers at various publications. Ditto for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006, edited by Brian "The Elegant Universe" Greene. Greene is a professor of physics at Columbia University, and yet he doesn't seem to share your qualms about letting non-scientists write about science.
So...are you really stating the facts or just voicing a prejudice? If the latter, it seems like you're denying yourself some good and enjoyable science writing. Maybe pick up a couple volumes in the two series I've mentioned.
Second, the requirement to register your work was removed almost thirty years ago.
I'm not sure about that. If you mean that the Copyright Act of 1976 (which was 30 years ago) removed some old requirements for copyright (like putting the circle-C on the work) then you're right... but my understanding was that there were still additional benefits to actual registration where it came to the damages you could claim in court. That is, you can certainly still WIN a copyright case without registering, but my understanding (and again I could be wrong) was that, even though you've won, you are limited in terms of what compensation you can claim if you have not registered.
Stick it to 'em. Make them pay for copyright violations and "loss of revenue".
IANAL, but the way I understand it, lost revenue is often difficult to prove. In cases where it can be established that the offending party knew that it was violating copyright and willfully did so anyway, however, the court can require payment of statutory damages (which can be much higher than any revenue the plaintiff might have actually lost). The only glitch here is that I was under the impression that you needed to have registered your work with the Copyright Office in advance in order to claim statutory damages.
The problem with nearly all your examples is they deal with fiction.
That's odd, because exactly none of my examples were about fiction, except for the rhetorical comment about novels and plays. So far as I know, Sports Illustrated doesn't publish any fiction, so I don't know why you'd make this assumption -- but then I don't read it.
Maybe I should reiterate, more clearly:
Some of the best nonfiction books about the mafia ever written have been written by journalists, not mafia hitmen. In fact I'd wager that all the ones written by mafia hitmen were actually written by ghostwriters.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are two of the most celebrated journalists in American history, for a story you may have heard about -- and, curiously, not only has neither of them ever been the President of the United States, but neither has even held public office.
Meanwhile, some of the clearest and best-written articles about IT and computing that I have read have been written by people whom I know to have no significant hands-on experience with IT. I know this about them because I hired them, because I knew they were good writers. And that's who most editors hire, because it takes a good writer to write a good article. The writer may or may not be a good tech; it's completely optional.
You can certainly argue otherwise, but it seems to me you know not much about which you speak.
Is there a *market* for good scientific journalism? I don't think so, based on a few decades of observing the journalism market and the public's interest in the topic.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. To a certain extent, I think it's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then a vicious cycle. Media doesn't print good science coverage, so the public doesn't go to the media looking for it, so why should the media print it when nobody seems to want it? I suspect that half the reason so much "technology journalism" today concerns itself primarily with cell phones and videogames (consumer products and amusements) is because they think that's what everybody wants. But how can you want something else when you don't really know what you could have if somebody would just produce it? It seems like there are countless other topics that grownups could talk about beyond what they're going to do this weekend and what they should spend their money on... but half of the intelligent people who could contribute to such topics don't, because nobody is starting the conversation. My fear is that this is how media plays into the hands of marketers and becomes merely another arm of the consumer culture octopus.
Oh, and the insane rambling by the journalist who think they can write about anything and not have a background in it is of course insane. That's typical journalism though.
It's not insane. Just because you develop software for a living, do you think you could write better magazine articles about software development than somebody who does that for a living? Or better novels about software development? Or better plays etc.? If so, then you should probably get out there and do it, because it would be a really easy way for you to make some extra cash.
People always want to make this assumption: I have a keyboard, I can write. I send emails; I write every day! But they never seem to make this assumption about race car driving (I own a car!) or telecommunications engineering (I own a phone!). Why make it about writing? Other people have computers. Does that mean they can program?
Writing is a skill that a lot of people work very hard at. When what you want to do is write something, it's more important to have that skill than to be the master of the thing you're writing about. You don't have to be a mafia hitman to write about the mob. You don't have to be a surgeon to write about medicine. You don't have to be a football player to write for Sports Illustrated. You don't have to be a programmer to write for a computer magazine. If you think you can do it better than those who do, then by all means give it a shot. Editors are often quite desperate for good writers.
William Zinsser has a great anecdote near the beginning of his book, "On Writing." In it, he talks about how he was sitting on a panel with a surgeon named Dr. Brock who had written a couple of magazine articles, and how Dr. Brock had waxed on and on about how fun and "spiritual" and whatever else it was to be "a writer." Zinsser was taken aback, because it had never once occurred to him -- in all the long, solitary years of writing and rewriting and refining his work -- that writing could be easy. "Maybe I should take up surgery on the side," he said.
They might, if you're able to clearly phrase your assumptions in terms of things like widths of a human hair, the volume of an Olympic swimming pool, or the speed of a rifle bullet.
Even so, you'd still be talking about many Libraries of Congress' worth of information that the reader would need to understand.
Totally by coincidence, just the other day I wrote up my impressions of an article that appeared in a recent issue New Scientist, as compared to Stephen Jay Gould's philosophy on what constitutes good science writing. In short, the New Scientist article did not fare well. Check it out if you're so inclined.
* 68k -> PPC shit on developers and consumers; PPC -> Intel did the same thing again, or will the second Apple drops support for their PPC hardware.
Please. By the time Apple dropped support for 68K all those machines were so woefully inadequate that anybody with serious work to do had already end-of-lifed them. If you really needed to keep a 33 MHz Quadra 950 running (to host your Quickmail server, maybe?) you had an easy solution: stick to Mac OS 7.6.1 and don't worry about it.
Agreed. Complaining that Vista is overloaded with DRM only detracts from legitimate complaints about how totally lackluster and low-value Vista really is. Why give people conspiracy theories when it should be enough to explain that Vista will cause them some small amount of headaches in exchange for almost no benefit?
If the problem is simply getting around a hill, maybe you can set up some kind of fixed-position high speed wireless that will relay a satellite link from somewhere with a clear vantage. It doesn't sound easy to set up, but if it's a choice between that and moving...
If you want something a little more convincing than an ostrich, consider the cassowary; a six-foot tall bird that can run at 30 mph, jump 5 feet high, and swim well, with a 5-inch middle claw on each foot that the bird can and will use as a weapon, disemboweling a human with a single kick. They are intelligent, vicious when threatened, and cunning enough to outflank organized groups of humans they perceive as a threat.
You forgot to mention that it has a brilliant, eerie blue head and an overgrown beak that resembles a horn on its forehead. No joke -- when I saw one of these animals in a zoo in Malaysia, I had never heard of such a thing before. It stopped me in my tracks. Until I was able to figure out what it was after I got home, I was calling it the "Star Trek bird," because it looked like it couldn't be real.
More evidence--in case you needed it--even when Congress' approval rating drops into the doldrums, as it has on several occasions, re-election rates for seated members rarely drops below 90%.
Heh. Well, sure, man... you don't want to throw away your vote.
Did you notice the 11% approval rating in congress?
Errr. ..doesn't such a low approval rating demonstrate not that people are disinterested in government, but rather that they are very interested and yet powerless to do anything about a government gone awry?
Putting your most influential op-ed writers behind a pay wall is a sure way to make their voices irrelevant in the Internet age.
Yeah, really... people sure ignored the hell out of The World is Flat. It was so irrelevant that Friedman's put out, what... three different editions so far?
Slashdot Mirror
17 years?? It says right there in that same article that the military dictatorship of Myanmar (nee Burma) first started using armed troops to suppress anti-government protests in 1974.
It is also not untrue that failing to negate your own negative statement again cannot lead to confusion, no?
Indeed that does sound bad. Which writers are you talking about? They probably don't read Slashdot, so you can go ahead and name names.
Finally getting MythTV working with my remote, configuring my video drivers properly, and getting my SPDIF audio working were the final nails for me. Now Linux can do pretty much everything that Windows Media Center was doing for me before. I haven't rebooted from my Ubuntu partition in weeks. I find I'm far more efficient in this OS (even with the GL Desktop disabled!)
In the world of restaurants, this strategy works for McDonald's. Think about it. There are a number of comparisons to make there.
Except "incremental improvements" don't generally require a lot of additional support. What do you do when Joe Blow has pretty much figured out how to use Windows? What do you charge for then?
Again, for someone who claims to be interested in science, your observations don't seem to be that grounded in empiricism. For example, I'm holding in my hands right now a copy of The Best American Science Writing 2007, edited by Gina Kolata, and though not all of the bios of the writers in question reference their education, only a handful cite science or medicine degrees. Most have long backgrounds as writers at various publications. Ditto for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006, edited by Brian "The Elegant Universe" Greene. Greene is a professor of physics at Columbia University, and yet he doesn't seem to share your qualms about letting non-scientists write about science.
So...are you really stating the facts or just voicing a prejudice? If the latter, it seems like you're denying yourself some good and enjoyable science writing. Maybe pick up a couple volumes in the two series I've mentioned.
I'm not sure about that. If you mean that the Copyright Act of 1976 (which was 30 years ago) removed some old requirements for copyright (like putting the circle-C on the work) then you're right ... but my understanding was that there were still additional benefits to actual registration where it came to the damages you could claim in court. That is, you can certainly still WIN a copyright case without registering, but my understanding (and again I could be wrong) was that, even though you've won, you are limited in terms of what compensation you can claim if you have not registered.
IANAL, but the way I understand it, lost revenue is often difficult to prove. In cases where it can be established that the offending party knew that it was violating copyright and willfully did so anyway, however, the court can require payment of statutory damages (which can be much higher than any revenue the plaintiff might have actually lost). The only glitch here is that I was under the impression that you needed to have registered your work with the Copyright Office in advance in order to claim statutory damages.
That's odd, because exactly none of my examples were about fiction, except for the rhetorical comment about novels and plays. So far as I know, Sports Illustrated doesn't publish any fiction, so I don't know why you'd make this assumption -- but then I don't read it.
Maybe I should reiterate, more clearly:
Some of the best nonfiction books about the mafia ever written have been written by journalists, not mafia hitmen. In fact I'd wager that all the ones written by mafia hitmen were actually written by ghostwriters.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are two of the most celebrated journalists in American history, for a story you may have heard about -- and, curiously, not only has neither of them ever been the President of the United States, but neither has even held public office.
Meanwhile, some of the clearest and best-written articles about IT and computing that I have read have been written by people whom I know to have no significant hands-on experience with IT. I know this about them because I hired them, because I knew they were good writers. And that's who most editors hire, because it takes a good writer to write a good article. The writer may or may not be a good tech; it's completely optional.
You can certainly argue otherwise, but it seems to me you know not much about which you speak.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. To a certain extent, I think it's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then a vicious cycle. Media doesn't print good science coverage, so the public doesn't go to the media looking for it, so why should the media print it when nobody seems to want it? I suspect that half the reason so much "technology journalism" today concerns itself primarily with cell phones and videogames (consumer products and amusements) is because they think that's what everybody wants. But how can you want something else when you don't really know what you could have if somebody would just produce it? It seems like there are countless other topics that grownups could talk about beyond what they're going to do this weekend and what they should spend their money on... but half of the intelligent people who could contribute to such topics don't, because nobody is starting the conversation. My fear is that this is how media plays into the hands of marketers and becomes merely another arm of the consumer culture octopus.
It's not insane. Just because you develop software for a living, do you think you could write better magazine articles about software development than somebody who does that for a living? Or better novels about software development? Or better plays etc.? If so, then you should probably get out there and do it, because it would be a really easy way for you to make some extra cash.
People always want to make this assumption: I have a keyboard, I can write. I send emails; I write every day! But they never seem to make this assumption about race car driving (I own a car!) or telecommunications engineering (I own a phone!). Why make it about writing? Other people have computers. Does that mean they can program?
Writing is a skill that a lot of people work very hard at. When what you want to do is write something, it's more important to have that skill than to be the master of the thing you're writing about. You don't have to be a mafia hitman to write about the mob. You don't have to be a surgeon to write about medicine. You don't have to be a football player to write for Sports Illustrated. You don't have to be a programmer to write for a computer magazine. If you think you can do it better than those who do, then by all means give it a shot. Editors are often quite desperate for good writers.
William Zinsser has a great anecdote near the beginning of his book, "On Writing." In it, he talks about how he was sitting on a panel with a surgeon named Dr. Brock who had written a couple of magazine articles, and how Dr. Brock had waxed on and on about how fun and "spiritual" and whatever else it was to be "a writer." Zinsser was taken aback, because it had never once occurred to him -- in all the long, solitary years of writing and rewriting and refining his work -- that writing could be easy. "Maybe I should take up surgery on the side," he said.
Even so, you'd still be talking about many Libraries of Congress' worth of information that the reader would need to understand.
Totally by coincidence, just the other day I wrote up my impressions of an article that appeared in a recent issue New Scientist, as compared to Stephen Jay Gould's philosophy on what constitutes good science writing. In short, the New Scientist article did not fare well. Check it out if you're so inclined.
Please. By the time Apple dropped support for 68K all those machines were so woefully inadequate that anybody with serious work to do had already end-of-lifed them. If you really needed to keep a 33 MHz Quadra 950 running (to host your Quickmail server, maybe?) you had an easy solution: stick to Mac OS 7.6.1 and don't worry about it.
Agreed. Complaining that Vista is overloaded with DRM only detracts from legitimate complaints about how totally lackluster and low-value Vista really is. Why give people conspiracy theories when it should be enough to explain that Vista will cause them some small amount of headaches in exchange for almost no benefit?
Funny, that's kinda how I feel about all videogames today. People really spend $500 on a video card? Pull the other one.
Um. I believe the grandparent was making fun, not of Halo 3, but of the poorly-written summary.
(And if you didn't realize the summary was poorly written, and you weren't expecting it to be made fun of, well, you must be new here.)
O RLY? You can only buy the powdered form where I live.
If the problem is simply getting around a hill, maybe you can set up some kind of fixed-position high speed wireless that will relay a satellite link from somewhere with a clear vantage. It doesn't sound easy to set up, but if it's a choice between that and moving...
You forgot to mention that it has a brilliant, eerie blue head and an overgrown beak that resembles a horn on its forehead. No joke -- when I saw one of these animals in a zoo in Malaysia, I had never heard of such a thing before. It stopped me in my tracks. Until I was able to figure out what it was after I got home, I was calling it the "Star Trek bird," because it looked like it couldn't be real.
Google has the evidence.
Heh. Well, sure, man ... you don't want to throw away your vote.
No argument here.
Errr. . .doesn't such a low approval rating demonstrate not that people are disinterested in government, but rather that they are very interested and yet powerless to do anything about a government gone awry?
Yeah, really... people sure ignored the hell out of The World is Flat. It was so irrelevant that Friedman's put out, what ... three different editions so far?