benrobb

Accuracy & Precision: Two Problems with Social News

Whether it’s deliberate or accidental, I’ve been reminded several times in the last few months that you can’t believe everything you read in the social news.

Those who do it on purpose seek the sensationalism needed to create Digg-able linkbait. This is by far the more atrocious sin, but many bloggers simply neglect to check their facts. Far too many people assume that because they see it on their social news site of choice, it must be true, so I stand up here as the voice of reason. Please check your facts! Stop the sensationalism!

Here I do not condemn the rumor sites that identify themselves as such (anything related to Apple), nor the fake sites that everyone knows are fake (Fake Steve Jobs anyone?), but rather the Diggs, the Slashdots, the Techmemes, the Reddits, and the Sphinns of the world.

I finally got sick of the magnitude of sin on Digg and canceled all RSS subscriptions from that site. For this reason, none of my examples come from Digg, but I can only imagine that it carried even worse headlines and summaries.

TSA Bans Batteries from Luggage on Airline Flights

A few recent examples: first there was the “fact” that starting Jan 1, 2008, you couldn’t take spare batteries for your devices on plains anymore Electronista reported this as Lithium Batteries to be Banned from Air Luggage; it also showed up on Slashdot as the slightly more accurate TSA Limits Lithium Batteries on Airplanes an accurate enough title, though the content of the article said otherwise. As it turns out there are some limitations, but they are not nearly as strict as we were first told. For the full story, check SafeTravel.dot.gov here and here.

RIAA Says that Ripping MP3s is Illegal

Then the RIAA said that ripping CDs to MP3 was illegal. Slashdot had it as RIAA Argues That MP3s from CDs are Unauthorized and Electronista picked it up as RIAA Claims CD Rips Are Piracy in Lawsuit. These are probably more forgivable since both were based on an article in the Washington Post. Later though, this article popped up on CNet that gave us the real story exposing Marc Fisher (Washington Post reporter) as a bit of a sensationalist himself.

I’ve got no love for the RIAA, but Mr. Fisher deliberately misinterpreted statements in the RIAA’s brief and refused to admit to having made a mistake (at least to my knowledge). What the RIAA actually said was that the unauthorized act was putting the MP3s in the Kazaa shared folder on his local network. Admittedly the RIAA is still venturing into unknown territory, but anyone can see the difference in the magnitude of the claims.

The part that really irks me, though, is that people continue to report it inaccuracies, even after they’ve been clarified and corrected. Just this afternoon on Slashdot, there’s a report that the EFF has come to Mr. Howell’s defense (defendant in the above RIAA case) and the Slashdot contributor clearly states “This is the same case in which the RIAA claimed that Mr. Howell’s MP3s, copied from his CDs, were themselves unlawful.” That claim was never made.

Cary Sherman (President of the RIAA) actually said “Not a single (legal) case has ever been brought (by the RIAA against someone for copying music for personal use). Not a single claim has ever been made.” Granted it’s worming around the issue of how the RIAA really feels about the topic, but it’s an official statement and, very strictly speaking, it’s true.

Can we put an end to the sensationalism and just report the news so that we can stop wasting our lives reading false news? I’ve really got better things to do with my time.

Tags: 2 cents, riaa, social media

Dusting Off the Developer Skills, Stem Cells, & Consulting

So after my recent Christmas break addiction to computer games, I’ve once again sworn them off (for the most part) convinced that there are better things to do with my time. Of course I already know this, but once or twice a year I forget and spend all my spare time after Abby’s asleep playing games. This usually lasts for a week or two.

PSCB – Public Stem Cell Banking

It was actually a favor for my wife that drew me out of it again. She started up two blogs, one for the family and one for her long time goal of public stem cell banking. Not the controversial embryonic stem cells, but the umbilical ones that come from the baby’s umbilical cord after it’s been severed. Normally these cells just go to waste, but there are actually a few places that can collect them. These cells are just as useful as the embryonic cells, but it conveniently avoids all the controversy.

If you want to donate your stem cells for research or for others to use, it’s actually quite a laborious process and she wants to raise public awareness so that more people can do it. This started off with registering a domain for her and then putting up a site. Then we had to find a nice theme, get ready to play the SEO game, and start designing.

TheRobisons.org

Then I figured as long as I was putting my web developer hat on again, I might as well update the family site. My family isn’t the most techno-savvy, but I thought that after an entire year with no one posting new content it was probably time to rethink the site. Most of the family members had started up their own blogs, so now therobisons.org is a feed aggregator of sorts, grabbing content from everybody’s blogs and putting it in a central location. I grabbed the Post Titles only and the links push visitor’s back to the writer’s own blogs.Another look, more tweaking, no SEO for this site, and we’ve got another site up and running.

Benrobb.com

And for those of you actually on the site reading, you’ll notice a new look to my own site as well. This one probably consumed the most effort, but I’m happy with the outcome. I obviously didn’t do the theme myself, but there’s always the tweaking that has to happen to make everything look the way you want. Along the way I discovered that disabling the WP-Cache plugin does not turn off the plug-in and it continues to cache pages, but other than that, things went pretty smoothly.

It’s another right-side nav theme, which I used to really hate, but in my efforts to branch out, the last theme on the site had a right-side nav and it kinda grew on me. This one’s got a nice reddish-brown color and I’m a fan. Hope you like it to.

Freelancing

Then suddenly, my father-in-law contacts me and says he’s actually got two sites that need to be put together for two new businesses that he’s starting with a partner. They’ve already got contracts coming in for whatever it is (I’m not clear on that yet) and they need sites right away. They’re going to be pretty simple, and hopefully it’ll bring in a decent amount of extra funds for the help-ben-and-alison-buy-a-house fund. When it rains it pours I guess.

Tags: dev, robisons, stem cells

American Election Prospects Aren’t Really That Bad

I can’t take credit for the thought, it was my wife that actually voiced it, but I thought it was appropriate. There’s been a lot of violence in Kenya culminating now in a max exodus of over 1 million people that are leaving the country. The refugees are convinced that the most recent elections which resulted in President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election was a sham, and that Raila Odinga really won.

Hundreds have died in the subsequent violent protests and now people are fleeing to get away from the violence and President Kibaki’s unwanted leadership.

As my wife and I saw this on the news again today, she said, “At least our elections aren’t that bad.” Last election when President George W. Bush was re-elected and called it a “mandate from the people” we really didn’t think he was a great candidate for the job. At the same time, we didn’t really think that Jonh Kerry was the best choice in the world, and we are stuck voting for the lesser of to evils. As things have turned out, perhaps we didn’t make the best choice after all, but the point was that either is better than the alternative demonstrated in Kenya. We didn’t have people fleeing the country by the millions.

Now of course more Americans have fallen to the war on terror than Kenyans have fallen to post-election violence; and of course the President of the United States of America has more power and more responsibility that then President of Kenya. I’m not going to even try to address those topics, but the whole things made me realize that this election is shaping up rather nicely.

Yes, the thought of another Clinton in office quite scares me, but the first Clinton didn’t do all that bad. He had some personal issues to be sure, but he actually made a pretty fair president. Obama seems like a pretty good option as well, and those are the democrats (is it bad to say that I’m a little less confident in the republicans?) On the republican side, you’ve got the religionists Mr. Romney and Mr. Huckabee, both lacking experience in some areas but both have a solid moral foundation. I’m not educated enough to have an opinion on Rudy Guliani. And there seems to be a lot of support for the dark horse Ron Paul (surely you’ve seen posters for him hanging from the overpasses) and I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about him.

So while our candidates are not perfect, there are a lot of good things to look forward to. What do you think?

Tags: elections, hillary, mitt, obama