The overarching law is Theodore Sturgeon's: when someone
said, at a science-fiction writer's conference, that 90% of
SF is crap, he came back with "Yes, but 90% of everything is
crap."
By some estimates, 80% of software projects come to grief.
Of the the stuff that does go live, maybe half has huge room for
improvement, I'd say. So the ratio isn't too different.
Journalists may or may not have "an obligation to talk sense",
as Nick says below, but both good talk and bad are at least
cheap. In the not-too-distant past, software engineers were
part of a bubble that flushed untold billions from ordinary people's
retirement portfolios into the sewer. (Enron being basically a
soft-ware company on closer inspection, we're not even out of
the woods yet.) I suppose we programmers can blame all
that on bad journalism if we're really clever, especially on
the supposed "self-censorship" of the media, but for my
money, nothing beats the self-censorship of a start-up
gone rotten while it's in the SEC-mandated quiet period
before an IPO.
So hey, go ahead, cast that first stone. Just look where
you're reaching for it. Try the sniff test first. It might be
something you left there yourself, not so long ago. It's
certainly happened to me.
Can we get back to talking keitai now?
-michael turner
leap@gol.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick May" <nick@kyushu.com>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 9:21 PM
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: [link] wireless spam.
>
> keitai-l@appelsiini.net writes:
> >After all, it is the journalists who will provide much of
> >the content as the keitai evolves into something more than a
> >cute display for cartoon characters and snappy tunes.
>
> But if that is so, do they not have an obligation to talk sense - or at
> least display some knowledge off the subjects about which they write? And
> if they do not, are we - who in this area at least DO know a little about
> the subject on which they write, not justified in - indeed obligated to,
> state clearly that they are talking yea olde complete crap? Loudly, and,
> if appropriate, to the accompaniment of load and prolonged raspberries....
> I do not think that *overall*, to date, journalists have contributed one
> jot to the growth of wireless.
>
> I guess one's view on all this depends rather on one's view of the role of
> journalists as a whole - and the extent to which they fulfill it.
>
> A fairlry eloquent expression of the view to which I subscribe may be
> found at
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/24263.html
>
>
> andrew.orlowski quoth....
> >Bollogs
> >Now as you might expect, no one wishes Big Media to fall as much as us.
> >It's often self-censoring, vain and hugely insecure: witness the
> >countless guilds and the thousands of awards that journalists here give
> >themselves, almost it seems, on an hourly basis. A journalism that
> >strives for the social respectability of say the legal profession (stop
> >laughing there, at the back!) is almost certainly one that isn't doing
> >its job.
>
> ....... (snip a couple of paragraphs) ....
>
> >A journalist's true role is like that of the soil microbe, turning things
> >over, exposing stuff, bringing in oxygen. Find a hack who aspires to a
> >greater social status than that of bacteria, and you're in trouble.
>
> But then I grew up with Private Eye and the Economist.
> >
>
> you continue....
>
> > And it
> >is the researchers and consultants who will help take the
> >technology into mass markets far beyond these 'toons and
> >tunes.
>
> I am all in favour of researchers researching and consultants consulting -
> but when they talk "
> >Bollogs
> ", they should be mocked from one shore to the other.
>
> A GOOD journalist is like a bacteria.
>
> So, can we stop polishing apples?
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
> This mail was sent to address leap@gol.com
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>
>
Received on Mon Mar 4 05:46:16 2002