Slanted Article
-
Heh, I just came across two articles of the same story, one from ZDNet and another from The Register. It's funny how The Register slants the article where it says that Ballmer admitted that Windows is a lot more expensive to run than Linux. Though, in ZDNet, it says that Ballmer joked that Linux is lower cost in terms of price of software. Though, he also said this later, "We're actually having to learn how to say we may have a higher price on this one but look at the additional value. Look at how the value actually leads to lower total cost of ownership despite the fact that our price may be higher". You be the judge. :suss: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26230.html http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-944342.html Frank Frank@Frank-L.com http://www.Frank-L.com Los Angeles, CA, USA
Frank Liao wrote: Heh, I just came across two articles of the same story, one from ZDNet and another from The Register. It's funny how The Register slants the article This is getting more and more worrying to me. Everytime I post a link to a controversial article I get told how my news source is a biased, polictically motivate front for the KKK or something similar. They then offer me an alternative source, which also gets thrown into the blender by other people, who say my original source was right. How the heck do you choose? How do you tell a biased source from a honest-to-god source? Is there such a thing? Seems like one solution is to have a news topic, and then links to a wide range of sources to get the whole perspective. Of course by the time I have finished reading each source I could get a PHD in the topic and Armagedon has arrived. I just want a nice, unbiased, summarised overview of the topic really. Any ideas? regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and to be loved in return - Moulin Rouge Alison Pentland wrote: I now have an image of you in front of the mirror in the morning, wearing your knickers, socks and shoes trying to decided if they match!
-
Frank Liao wrote: Heh, I just came across two articles of the same story, one from ZDNet and another from The Register. It's funny how The Register slants the article This is getting more and more worrying to me. Everytime I post a link to a controversial article I get told how my news source is a biased, polictically motivate front for the KKK or something similar. They then offer me an alternative source, which also gets thrown into the blender by other people, who say my original source was right. How the heck do you choose? How do you tell a biased source from a honest-to-god source? Is there such a thing? Seems like one solution is to have a news topic, and then links to a wide range of sources to get the whole perspective. Of course by the time I have finished reading each source I could get a PHD in the topic and Armagedon has arrived. I just want a nice, unbiased, summarised overview of the topic really. Any ideas? regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and to be loved in return - Moulin Rouge Alison Pentland wrote: I now have an image of you in front of the mirror in the morning, wearing your knickers, socks and shoes trying to decided if they match!
I think that if you know anything about the subject being reported on then it's fairly easy to recognise when a site's being biased (and most sites will stay biased in the same direction - i.e. /. or reg's microsoft bashing, but it's rarely unfounded hatred in their cases. From past experience, BBC News[^] is fairly unbiased (it's fairly common for all 3 major UK political parties to complain at them for being biased towards the other parties, which is a good sign that they aren't biased at all!) Also, the BBC isn't funded by adverts, so they don't have the whims of advertisers to worry about (I remember a classic case where a BBC car program gave a really bad review of a new car, which apparently outraged the company [GM I think] so much that they ordered their marketing department to withdraw all advertising from BBC channels :laugh: ) -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
-
I think that if you know anything about the subject being reported on then it's fairly easy to recognise when a site's being biased (and most sites will stay biased in the same direction - i.e. /. or reg's microsoft bashing, but it's rarely unfounded hatred in their cases. From past experience, BBC News[^] is fairly unbiased (it's fairly common for all 3 major UK political parties to complain at them for being biased towards the other parties, which is a good sign that they aren't biased at all!) Also, the BBC isn't funded by adverts, so they don't have the whims of advertisers to worry about (I remember a classic case where a BBC car program gave a really bad review of a new car, which apparently outraged the company [GM I think] so much that they ordered their marketing department to withdraw all advertising from BBC channels :laugh: ) -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
benjymous wrote: I think that if you know anything about the subject being reported on then it's fairly easy to recognise when a site's being biased Well you have a more suspicious/paranoid mind than me because I do not easily recognise bias, unless of course it is just outright tripe-bashing bias. Like that NYTimes Bush article I posted a while back. To me it sounded quite legit and well researched, plus it matched with a couple of other links people posted afterwards. Yet I was told NYTimes is biased against Bush and so I shouldn't take notice of them. I knew little of the topic in question, but it still interested/affected me, so I naturally wanted an unbiased and informative article on it (the FoxNews alternative one seemed no better to me.) To me it seems like the web and computing power is a near perfect tool for colating all the viewpoints into a summarised overview, or even just a central repositry of related links on a certain breaking-topic. Yet I have yet to see a site which deals like that. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and to be loved in return - Moulin Rouge Alison Pentland wrote: I now have an image of you in front of the mirror in the morning, wearing your knickers, socks and shoes trying to decided if they match!
-
Frank Liao wrote: Heh, I just came across two articles of the same story, one from ZDNet and another from The Register. It's funny how The Register slants the article This is getting more and more worrying to me. Everytime I post a link to a controversial article I get told how my news source is a biased, polictically motivate front for the KKK or something similar. They then offer me an alternative source, which also gets thrown into the blender by other people, who say my original source was right. How the heck do you choose? How do you tell a biased source from a honest-to-god source? Is there such a thing? Seems like one solution is to have a news topic, and then links to a wide range of sources to get the whole perspective. Of course by the time I have finished reading each source I could get a PHD in the topic and Armagedon has arrived. I just want a nice, unbiased, summarised overview of the topic really. Any ideas? regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and to be loved in return - Moulin Rouge Alison Pentland wrote: I now have an image of you in front of the mirror in the morning, wearing your knickers, socks and shoes trying to decided if they match!
Paul Watson wrote: How the heck do you choose? How do you tell a biased source from a honest-to-god source? Is there such a thing? A brain. :-D Okay, in a less flippant response... often if you think about what was written or said, even just a little, you can get an idea. I think that you can safely assume that if you're reading something political, subjective, etc., it is likely to be biased at least a little, no matter where you get it from. If it's important enough, then reading a variety of sources and getting a good undestanding of the issue at hand is a must. If it's *not* that important to you, when who cares? Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat.
-
benjymous wrote: I think that if you know anything about the subject being reported on then it's fairly easy to recognise when a site's being biased Well you have a more suspicious/paranoid mind than me because I do not easily recognise bias, unless of course it is just outright tripe-bashing bias. Like that NYTimes Bush article I posted a while back. To me it sounded quite legit and well researched, plus it matched with a couple of other links people posted afterwards. Yet I was told NYTimes is biased against Bush and so I shouldn't take notice of them. I knew little of the topic in question, but it still interested/affected me, so I naturally wanted an unbiased and informative article on it (the FoxNews alternative one seemed no better to me.) To me it seems like the web and computing power is a near perfect tool for colating all the viewpoints into a summarised overview, or even just a central repositry of related links on a certain breaking-topic. Yet I have yet to see a site which deals like that. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and to be loved in return - Moulin Rouge Alison Pentland wrote: I now have an image of you in front of the mirror in the morning, wearing your knickers, socks and shoes trying to decided if they match!
If you want to suffer cognitive dissidence, try reading the NY times op-ed, then the Wall Street Journal op-ed. Each has well reasoned editorials on newsworthy topics, and they are almost always come to diametrically opposite conclusions. For example, just check out their editorials on the ICC.
-
Frank Liao wrote: Heh, I just came across two articles of the same story, one from ZDNet and another from The Register. It's funny how The Register slants the article This is getting more and more worrying to me. Everytime I post a link to a controversial article I get told how my news source is a biased, polictically motivate front for the KKK or something similar. They then offer me an alternative source, which also gets thrown into the blender by other people, who say my original source was right. How the heck do you choose? How do you tell a biased source from a honest-to-god source? Is there such a thing? Seems like one solution is to have a news topic, and then links to a wide range of sources to get the whole perspective. Of course by the time I have finished reading each source I could get a PHD in the topic and Armagedon has arrived. I just want a nice, unbiased, summarised overview of the topic really. Any ideas? regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and to be loved in return - Moulin Rouge Alison Pentland wrote: I now have an image of you in front of the mirror in the morning, wearing your knickers, socks and shoes trying to decided if they match!
Two sources are enough. When they are relatively close, take the average. When they are far from each other, you know truth is nowhere to be found. Just source: Try to advocate the other side yourself (or, if you don't trust the source, both sides). This won't give you an unbiased report, but a reasonable opinion. Do this for some years and you can play devils advocate everytime, on every topic :mad:
To comply with a request by Mike Mullikin, the US will be given a break from all my statements for the duration of one week, up to and including July 17th, 2002, 19:05 MESZ
[sighist] -
If you want to suffer cognitive dissidence, try reading the NY times op-ed, then the Wall Street Journal op-ed. Each has well reasoned editorials on newsworthy topics, and they are almost always come to diametrically opposite conclusions. For example, just check out their editorials on the ICC.
Stuart van Weele wrote: . For example, just check out their editorials on the ICC. How amazing and ludicrous that such differing "factual reporting" can come out of the same event. How can a singular event produce different facts? Obviously opinion and "subjectiveness" can never be removed from the process. Sometimes I think journalists seek not to better there truth gathering skills, but rather their truth twisting skills. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and to be loved in return - Moulin Rouge Alison Pentland wrote: I now have an image of you in front of the mirror in the morning, wearing your knickers, socks and shoes trying to decided if they match!
-
Frank Liao wrote: Heh, I just came across two articles of the same story, one from ZDNet and another from The Register. It's funny how The Register slants the article This is getting more and more worrying to me. Everytime I post a link to a controversial article I get told how my news source is a biased, polictically motivate front for the KKK or something similar. They then offer me an alternative source, which also gets thrown into the blender by other people, who say my original source was right. How the heck do you choose? How do you tell a biased source from a honest-to-god source? Is there such a thing? Seems like one solution is to have a news topic, and then links to a wide range of sources to get the whole perspective. Of course by the time I have finished reading each source I could get a PHD in the topic and Armagedon has arrived. I just want a nice, unbiased, summarised overview of the topic really. Any ideas? regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and to be loved in return - Moulin Rouge Alison Pentland wrote: I now have an image of you in front of the mirror in the morning, wearing your knickers, socks and shoes trying to decided if they match!
Paul Watson wrote: How do you tell a biased source from a honest-to-god source? even facts come with points of view (thank you david byrne for that line). the only thing that doesn't lie is a raw number, and even then, you have to be skeptical of the source, the calibration of the source, etc.. and speaking of honest-to-god - people can't even agree on the bible/koran/talmud, which should be (being the word of god and all) pretty clear about what's what. so we've got 100 different flavors of christianity running around all claiming to be the correct one. give up. go live in the woods. that's what i want. -c
To explain Donald Knuth's relevance to computing is like explaining Paul's relevance to the Catholic Church. He isn't God, he isn't the Son of God, but he was sent by God to explain God to the masses.
/. #3848917 -
It's a classic case of Microsoft FUD backfiring on them. They mean to say jokingly, "linux is cheap because it's crap. You're Americans, you know that expensive stuff is better, and our stuff is *expensive* :oD" but they end up being quoted as saying "linux is cheap [...] and our stuff is *expensive*" Which obviously changes the whole meaning of what they "said" I think that they should expect this at every turn, until they start being totally honest and open (although their entire marketing from day 1 has been based on "look how crap our competitors products are") -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
benjymous wrote: They mean to say jokingly, "linux is cheap because it's crap. You're Americans, you know that expensive stuff is better, and our stuff is *expensive* :oD" but they end up being quoted as saying "linux is cheap [...] and our stuff is *expensive*" it's true
"When a friend hurts us, we should write it down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness get in charge of erasing it away, and when something great happens, we should engrave it in the stone of the memory of the heart, where no wind can erase it" Nish on life [methinks] "It's The Soapbox; topics are optional" Shog 9
-
Frank Liao wrote: Heh, I just came across two articles of the same story, one from ZDNet and another from The Register. It's funny how The Register slants the article This is getting more and more worrying to me. Everytime I post a link to a controversial article I get told how my news source is a biased, polictically motivate front for the KKK or something similar. They then offer me an alternative source, which also gets thrown into the blender by other people, who say my original source was right. How the heck do you choose? How do you tell a biased source from a honest-to-god source? Is there such a thing? Seems like one solution is to have a news topic, and then links to a wide range of sources to get the whole perspective. Of course by the time I have finished reading each source I could get a PHD in the topic and Armagedon has arrived. I just want a nice, unbiased, summarised overview of the topic really. Any ideas? regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and to be loved in return - Moulin Rouge Alison Pentland wrote: I now have an image of you in front of the mirror in the morning, wearing your knickers, socks and shoes trying to decided if they match!
I have an idea, quit reading all of the articles. They say that ignorance is bliss right? Later, Eric --All the good themes have been used up. They've been turned into theme parks.
-
Heh, I just came across two articles of the same story, one from ZDNet and another from The Register. It's funny how The Register slants the article where it says that Ballmer admitted that Windows is a lot more expensive to run than Linux. Though, in ZDNet, it says that Ballmer joked that Linux is lower cost in terms of price of software. Though, he also said this later, "We're actually having to learn how to say we may have a higher price on this one but look at the additional value. Look at how the value actually leads to lower total cost of ownership despite the fact that our price may be higher". You be the judge. :suss: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26230.html http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-944342.html Frank Frank@Frank-L.com http://www.Frank-L.com Los Angeles, CA, USA
I remember a time when I used to think that anything that was free was cheap. I think many, many developers still think this is the case and I'm guessing this is a major contributor to the 'not built here' syndrome. There is a time and a place for free software. To me Linux and other free OSs are like an old MG. Lightweight, fun to drive, goes well in the corners, but just make sure you set aside saturday afternoons and have plenty of spares in stock, since you'll more then likely have to get your hands dirty. Perfect for some people. Windows is like the family sedan. It (more than often) just works. It costs a little more to being with but anyone can drive it, it rarely needs to be taken to the garage to be fixed and it doesn't have too many creaks and rattles. If you run a business then every hour wasted dealing with drivers or kernal rebuilds is a dollar lost. The cost of employing a Unix sysadmin to ensure things run smoothly is also going to cost more than someone who's read Windows 98 for Dummies. The the cost of an open source OS can, over time, exceed the upfront cost of purchasing something like Windows or MaxOS. It's similar to the hesitation many developers have about buying 3rd party components. Why spend $500 when I can write it myself for free? Start adding up development time, debug time, documentation time and the loss of productivity and $500 very quickly becomes an insignificant amount of money. cheers, Chris Maunder