My problem with Johann Hari was more prosaic. Whenever he wrote about a topic which I had professional knowledge of (which, as he was a left-leaning journalist, was often), he wrote utter tosh. I am looking at a typical example, when he accuses the Tories of studying a particular welfare model, ignoring the fact that it had been very thoroughly studied and drawn on by Labour previously, and then goes on to (I hope not willfully) misunderstand benefits public spending, implying that expenditure on income replacement benefits is far lower than it actually is. This is not the standard journalistic flaw of failing to note details correctly; his entire column is built on the facts he doesn't understand. I am not sure that any sort of journalism ethics course would help with that.
I'm with you. I started off really liking his writing, but after a while I trusted it less and less, because he just didn't seem to understand the complexities of things. His heart seemed to be in the right place, but his brain never quite made it.
There's a lot of bad journalism about. I spent a little time doing public affairs for an energy company. The base quality of journalism appeared poor. Science or energy correspondents confusing megawatts and megawatthours. But beyond a basic error of fact some profound difficulties getting it.
For example it takes at least five years to build a power station and you expect to run it and pay for it over 2o-60 years. Costs are set in decades, prices in half hourly blocks. This uncertainty drives a lot of behaviour in the industry but I never really got the feeling that the journalists I was talking to really got it.
Touch screen: I want the roll-up keyboard like in Star Trek please.
Song dataset: I didn't even know this dataset existed! Also, minor fail on the results being entirely images; means I can't search to see if the code found White Rabbit.
I think the transparent film touch screen thing typifies where I think a lot of economic growth is going to come from over the next couple of decades as we meander through the current* Kondratieff wave. The technology is way cool but like the author of the article I’m struggling to think of useful things to do with it. I think we’ll spend a lot of time over the next twenty years finding useful things to do with things we’ve already invented by bolting them together.
*Current that is if you believe in them or on the other hand think we may be having more than one at the same time this time round.
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http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/SAC-973F
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For example it takes at least five years to build a power station and you expect to run it and pay for it over 2o-60 years. Costs are set in decades, prices in half hourly blocks. This uncertainty drives a lot of behaviour in the industry but I never really got the feeling that the journalists I was talking to really got it.
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But all that would happen then is that I'd get an email telling me so, and then an email shortly afterwards telling me where it is :->
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Song dataset: I didn't even know this dataset existed! Also, minor fail on the results being entirely images; means I can't search to see if the code found White Rabbit.
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*Current that is if you believe in them or on the other hand think we may be having more than one at the same time this time round.