Tag: media
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The Canonization of St.Bill
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Andrew Orlowski
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If William Henry Gates the Third’s philanthropic work leads to him being canonized one day as the first secular saint of our times, I won’t stand in the way of the celebrations. Geeks get things very out of proportion, and the value of saving even one life should be more apparent to everyone than the…
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Nature journal cooked Wikipedia study
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Andrew Orlowski
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Nature magazine has some tough questions to answer after it let its Wikipedia fetish get the better of its responsibilities to reporting science. The Encyclopedia Britannica has published a devastating response to Nature‘s December comparison of Wikipedia and Britannica, and accuses the journal of misrepresenting its own evidence. Where the evidence didn’t fit, says Britannica,…
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The Hollywood crisis that isn’t
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Andrew Orlowski
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Everyone panic – that’s an order! Analysis Barely a week has gone by without reports of Hollywood’s great box office slump of 2005. So our thanks go to screenwriter John August for pointing out that on closer examination, the ‘slump’ is as elusive as missing Weapons of Mass Destruction. “Every Monday brought new speculation about just…
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Police stake out bar, hoping to catch man drunk
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Andrew Orlowski
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Canadian cops staked out a bar in the hope of finding a journalist drunk, a court heard today. The journalist in question, Edmonton newspaper columnist Kerry Diotte, wasn’t suspected of involvement in any crime. But Diotte had written a column criticizing the police force’s radar and camera technology as being more of a cash cow…
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Google snubs press in privacy fury
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Andrew Orlowski
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Google has thrown a hissy fit and blacklisted tech news site CNET’s News.com – vowing not to provide quotes or statements to the site for a year. “Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story,” noted reporter…
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For ambulance-chasing bloggers, tragedy equals opportunity
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Andrew Orlowski
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No human disaster these days is complete without two things, both of which can be guaranteed to surface within 24 hours of the event. First, virus writers will release a topical new piece of malware. And then weblog evangelists proclaim how terrific the catastrophe is for the internet. It doesn’t seem to matter how high the…