This week has been particularly fun for watching misreporting in the news*.
There have been several instances of dire, Chicken Little The Sky is Falling! type headlines.. followed shortly by, "Oh. Wait. The data doesn't support the conclusion" headlines.
Many, many years ago now, I took Journalism classes in college. Every instructor I had, had these funny things called "Rules". The top, Number #1 rule was "Verify, Verify, Verify". The second rule was "There must be three independent and unrelated sources before you can consider a 'tip' a 'fact'."
We were told that we reporters would have people, called "Editors", whose sole mission was to double-check our "facts" and verify our "sources".
We students quickly figured out why these instructors were teachers, and not actual newsmen (and newswomen, ahem)-- they weren't living in reality: in reality, there's the word "allegedly", and sentences like "is reported to have said".
And we young people knew that "Facts" are about as much fun as a date with the Encyclopedia Britannica. Sensation sells. Duh.
Contrary to this weeks headlines:
* Russia did not launch all out cyber-warfare against neighboring Georgia. It was, in fact, hackers -- on both sides -- joining in the fun and using their botnets to shut down a few websites.
See Kids, not Russian Government, attacking Georgia's Net.
* Vista's security features were not rendered useless by hackers, as "announced at BlackHat" (This one caused quite a stir!) In fact.. well, read what one of the "hackers" has to say:
See Alarmed about Vista security? Black Hat researcher Alexander Sotirov speaks out.
* And finally (for today), this Month's "patch Tuesday" did not cause "widespread disruption". At least.. here at T4E Headquarters it didn't. Unless you call having to reboot "to complete installation" some kind of disaster.
Yes, there were more Updates than usual, and more of them were marked "Important".. but that is actually a "good" thing-- those Updates close holes.
But if you DID experience trouble (or, ever do) after installing an Update, click the link below and scroll down to the bottom answer.
See IE’s Menu bar, Taskbar icons, and bad Updates*
*(more accurately, "infotainment".)
Today's free link: is in the link directly above.
Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.
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