Bullshit
Silicon Alley Insider on *that* Steve Jobs rumour
SAI spots an uncorroborated, anonymous post that says Jobs has had a heart attack. Publishes it, causing an immediate drop in Apple share prices. O noes! Uncorroborated, anonymous bollocks turns out to be bollocks!
Time for some retrospective justification:
We viewed it as significant, however, both for those who care about Apple and Steve and as a first meaningful test of “citizen journalism.”
Meaningful test my arse.
A small, vocal minority, however–including some members of the mainstream media–believe we should have waited to comment on the iReport story until we had heard back from Apple.
How about just checking whether there was any likelihood of the story being true? Charles Arthur:
First of all: what time would it be in California, where Jobs lives? Hmm, at 2pm on a Friday in London, it would be at least 8 hours behind - in other words, 6am. That at once gave a doubtful cast to two of the points in that “report”.
Who and where could the “insider” be? Not someone at Apple. While there might be people at 1 Infinite Loop who’d work until 3am or 4am, Jobs wouldn’t. He’s got a family and, well, a life. So he would have been at home. So the “insider” would be inside to what? The hospital? Paramedic dispatch? In which case they either wouldn’t know that it was a major heart attack, or what the symptoms were.
SAI commenter Mark Centz:
Whether journalists are just plain citizens or professionals, there is still the obligation to confirm facts wherever possible.
State-sponsored punching
Hurrah for Ealing Primary Care Trust, which has decided to liven up people’s cigarette breaks by providing people you can punch. At least, I think that’s the idea.
‘Smoking police’ will target people at betting shops, bus stops and shopping centres to shock them into giving up cigarettes… A team of 11 young people have been employed to approach smokers, in a similar way to charity fund-raisers - nicknamed ‘chuggers’ - who ask passers-by for donations.
Not to be outdone, it seems that the Scottish NHS wants to give fat people the opportunity to punch complete strangers too. As the inimitable Mr E puts it, responding to the story that “Armed with measuring tapes to check waists and equipment to test blood pressure, the “Street Nurses” are policing busy shopping centres, supermarkets and community centres. Any man with a paunch, or woman with an “apple-shaped” body whose waist measurement is higher than recommended limits is given diet and lifestyle advice or referred to local slimming classes”:
if there are people out there who honestly and genuinely believe that it is the role of government to walk the streets policing this shit, then we have a real fucking problem here.
Demotivation
I love the Demotivators, which do a wonderful job of skewering those supposedly inspiring posters you find in offices everywhere. There’s a new one:
Let’s just nuke the planet from orbit
OK, I know I’m talking about the Daily Mail here, but the comments on this story make me want to kill people. Story first:
When Suzanne Richards and Sarah Dobinson decided to sell their £650,000 home, they expected professional service from their estate agents.
Instead, they were left feeling ‘insulted and violated’ after a staff member outed them as a same-sex couple in a website advertisement.
Logging on to check how their period home was being marketed, they were horrified to find the word ‘lesbians’ in the space where prospective buyers would expect to see a reference number.
It’s a clear-cut case of an estate agent employee being an arsehole, and the firm has settled out of court for £5,000. Bring on the Mail readers!
But they don’t seem to be worried having their names and photographs in a national newspaper along with the “lesbian” comment.
Stating the truth is now is an offence in England.
Hypocrites .. they should be made to repay the money.
Anyone would think they were ashamed to be gay.
Oh, please, do me a favour. Are they lesbians or not? Are they afraid of what they are and therefore unwilling to admit it to others?
Is lesbians a derogatory term now? In this day and age they shouldn’t shy away from what they are.
Well at least they got a bit of money out of it. Can I claim money if someone calls me hetrosexual?
If the women are ashamed of their life style, why live it?
Am I missing something here - They Are lesbians - what’s the problem?
Five grand for stating the obvious.
“Shaking with disbelief” when they read the advert, but more than happy to give a statement and provide a nice piccy.
Absolutely ridiculous! If the advert had said the house was being sold by an architect and his wife, would this be discrimination against architects and heterosexual couples?
It’s not all bad, though. Beeper is clearly being forced to read the Mail against his or her will.
I can’t believe all the commenters who actually think that it wasn’t a big deal. This world is full of bigotry and hatred and these estate agents were intentionally adding to that. This was not done lightheartedly, but with malice. Maybe the commenters would like to have their addresses printed along with choice one word descriptors of them? The first one that springs to mind is “bigot”.
And Beeper isn’t alone. Hats off to Lucy:
We have no idea how this came to be in the paper - it is entirely possible that the press picked the story up from the courts or from the estate agents rather than that the women went to them. It may not be ‘discrimination’ as such but it was certainly no accident - you can’t accidentally insert the word ‘lesbian’ where a reference number should be. So clearly someone at the estate agents thought it would be funny to invade the privacy of two people who had hired them to provide a professional service, and found their sexuality to be a huge joke. The women made a private complaint first which was dismissed out of hand - as with so many situations, had the firm had the decency to offer a sincere apology that would probably have been an end to it. Good for the women for demanding to be treated with courtesy and respect.
Cure colic with cranial osteopathy for babies
Colic, it’s safe to say, sucks. But I found a cure. Mrs Bigmouth and I painted our heads blue, ate nothing but paint and cardboard for three weeks, danced an irish jig under the silvery moon at precisely 3.02am every morning and shouted “cakes!” every time we saw a magpie. And you know what? The colic went away!
I know what you’re thinking, Mister Science Man. You’re thinking that there’s no way we could have cured colic with our Blue Head Paint and Cardboard Diet Moondance Cake Shout Therapy. But we did, so nerrrrr. Colic goes away by itself eventually? A few babies may have a mild lactose intolerance that’s easily sorted with over-the counter drops? Some of the symptoms are due to overtiredness and overstimulation? I HAVE MY FINGERS IN MY EARS AND I CANNOT HEAR YOU NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH.
Ahem.
Mrs Bigmouth occasionally visits new-mum messageboards where parents and crazed alterna-health mentalists talk about the various ups and downs of parenting, and at the moment some of them are discussing cranial osteopathy, the ancient(ish) art of parting parents from their money. It’s a load of old toss, but of course the voices of reason keep coming up against the same immovable force: “Yeah but it worked for me!”
I understand it, I really do. Colic’s awful, you don’t want your kid to suffer, and you’ll try anything - and because colic eventually goes away, if you’ve been taking your kid to a quack you’ll naturally think the quackery cured your child. But let’s be sensible here. Handing over your cash to someone who believes in secret magic brain pulses and skull-rubbing to fix physiological issues caused by a traumatic birth isn’t smart. You’d be better off hiring a patient babysitter and going to the cinema for a few hours.
Despicable rags
Obsolete has written a fantastic post about Robert Murat’s successful libel action against 11 - 11! - newspapers.
the truly unprecedented payout to Robert Murat by not just the Express papers but every single one of the daily tabloids with the exception of the Daily Sport, three of the Sunday tabloids and also the Scotsman is an indictment of a journalistic culture that regards the lives of those who are being written about as being of no concern whatsoever…
Murat may receive £550,000 damages; split that 11 ways and it adds up to just £50,000 a newspaper, which to the Daily Mail and Sun especially is absolute peanuts. They’ve had a year of fun, boosted their circulations, brought in far more than that through their race to the bottom, competing with each other as to who could print the more lurid stories, and at the end of it they have to cough up a whole £50,000? To spout a cliche, they literally must be laughing all the way to the bank.
A legendary video game… for all the wrong reasons
God, I really want to know the real story behind this one: new PC game Limbo of the Lost, which has been a bazillion years in development, is uncannily similar to pretty much every game ever made. And by similar I don’t mean “yeah yeah, this is just like Doom”. I mean “OMG that’s all been nicked!”
The ever-reliable Rock Paper Shotgun has a good overview and the gorgeous, pouting Richard Cobbett has an in-depth review.
Because being a single mum with an autistic child isn’t hard enough
Being misanthropic isn’t fun, you know, and from time to time I do my very best to change my attitude. I read inspiring news stories about inspiring people doing inspiring things. I read sad stories about the sacrifices people make for others. I try to see the best in people, and take the Vonnegut attitude that we’re all here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is.
And then I see a news story like this one, and I’m back to square one.
“The teacher looked and me and said: ‘We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of “V.” And she said ‘yes, I do.’ And she said, ‘well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.’”
There’s more to the story than the psychic angle - the child was exhibiting signs of sexualised behaviour, which apparently isn’t unusual in autistic kids - but it does seem as if the psychic’s “vision” triggered the whole thing.
[Link via Fark]
Blame Canada
OTTAWA - The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices.
…Called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the new plan would see Canada join other countries, including the United States and members of the European Union, to form an international coalition against copyright infringement.
…The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that “infringes” on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies.
The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.
The agreement proposes any content that may have been copied from a DVD or digital video recorder would be open for scrutiny by officials - even if the content was copied legally.
As Jerry Sadowitz memorably put it: “moose-fuckers!”
iPod porn and news that isn’t news
An interesting article (Salon.com, via Fark) on a rash of iPod-porn stories that appeared on US TV. Now, iPod/iPhone porn does exist - the porn industry isn’t exactly slow to embrace new technology - but what’s interesting is the content of the news reports.
Nine stations aired Raskin’s warnings. Her segments had the look and feel of ordinary local news: Super-coifed anchors offer alarmist assessments of everyday objects, story at 11.
But something here was amiss. In addition to panning the iPod, Raskin used her time on TV to push “safer” holiday tech gifts, including products made by Panasonic, Namco and Techno Source. These weren’t unbiased reviews. The local stations that featured Raskin were fully aware that the three companies had hired her to pimp their products during news appearances
Sounds like a pretty lucrative line of work. Maybe I should ask for cash to plug stuff on radio.
Robin Raskin, the iPorn-wary tech journalist, told me that between 2002 and 2006, she appeared in almost three dozen TV marketing opportunities — roughly eight a year, each of which was sponsored by three to five companies and was built around a holiday or news event.
It’s more fuel for the Flat Earth News argument that cost-cutting in media means that an increasing amount of “news” isn’t anything of the sort.