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Slashback: Cradle, Indiscriminancy, Multiplicity 162

Posted by timothy from the reaching-clarity dept.
Slashback tonight with a few updates and reactions to recent Slashdot stories, including notes on Google News, eco-friendly architecture, and Kryptonite's vulnerable bike locks. Read on for the details, below.

Power the hot tub with compost, remember the soy insulation. andyrossmeissl writes "William McDonough's book Cradle to Cradle was reviewed favorably back in 2002, and now its theories about making things sustainably will be put into practice in the C2C Home design competition. The judges (McDonough is on the panel) will present 9 awards and actually build four of the projects on sites in Roanoke, Virginia. Wanna try your hand? Students and professionals should register by November 15."

About that blind-date opportunity ... Alex Salkever, Tech Editor of BusinessWeek online, wrote with a response to the recent story about the dilemma Google faces in trying to make money from its Google News service:

"There is another side to this that I think is equally important, namely, that Google is undermining the news business with its algorithm-based story selection.

It's clear to a journalist that this system was designed by someone who has no idea what's important in the news. While it may nail the top headlines, Google News can't do anything but that. There is no consideration of comprehensiveness of a story at one site over another. Often they cite bizarre news sources for stories way out of their specialty. Why else would we be seeing Al Jazeera as the top listing for a story on Kobe Bryant? The truth is, Web search in the Google model is a poor way to aggregate useful news. It's a great way to figure out what site posted news first but not much more than that.

All of which would be fine except that so many people go to Google for news that they have come to think its actually a really good source for news. It is, if you are searching for news. But if you are reading their home page it's wildly erratic. This ultimately hurts news outlets who work very hard to put together the best stories and draw traffic to their pages. Let me put it to you this way: Would you want the Google guys to set you up on a blind date? Guess what? They already did."

Fountain pens are still ineffective, at least. anomaly writes "I was quite displeased to see that the Kryptonite U locks were incredibly vulnerable to the venerable BIC pen.

I happened to be in the bike shop today and noticed that Kryptonite is sponsoring a lock replacement program. Now's the time to get that lock replaced with a more secure one - before the thieves make off with your bike. Kudos to Kryptonite for responding, and quickly."

Processor envy strikes hard. Adam writes "Orion Multisystems, the company which introduced two Linux-based multiprocessor supercomputers at the end of August, has begun selling the DT-12 Cluster Workstation online. The company claims that this 12-processor unit has a peak performance of 36 Gflops and is small enough to fit on a desk."
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Slashback: Cradle, Indiscriminancy, Multiplicity More

Slashback: Cradle, Indiscriminancy, Multiplicity

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  • Neat stuff. Especially the lock thing. I am glad they are replacing the locks, because it would be so terrible if they just didn't care. How much do the locks cost BTW? Ooh! I want a hot tub!
    • I got my standard Krypto U-Lock with cable for about $30. The only problem I have is that I just put $800 into my mountain bike and now I can't use my U-Lock.....I'm restricted to a cable and padlock I had laying around. Kryptonite is supposed to contact us personally mid-October for the replacements. Until then, my bike is locked up for no more than 1 hour at a time and is usually within plain view of university police.

      • Ummm.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bgalehouse ( 182357 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:19PM (#10466285)
        The problem is that kryptonite bought POS cores for their locks. A lock core made with close manufacturing tolerances is hard to pick, whether or not a BIC pen happens to fit around the center post.

        Without studying locksmithing, how can we know Kyptonite has changed lock core vendors? How do you know that they have solved the root problem? A $50 lock should be good against far more specialized tools than a Bic pen - how can you be sure that they have done a real security audit, when they didn't find this themselves? How can you believe that they even have the capability?

        You are waiting for a patch from Microsoft for a buffer overflow in an obvious location. You can wait for a patch, and hope that the next flaw is sufficiently less obvious, or you can install OpenBSD. That is, buy a big sold steel padlock from a vendor which at least tries for real security. Something that you'll actually see on the streets of NYC - Medico, Multilock, etc.

        • The new key cylinders are not designed for tubular keys, but flat keys, so that pretty much solves the BIC pen problem. As to whether or not the new ones are easy to pick, we don't know yet.

          BTW, it's Medeco, not Medico. But yeah, they seem to make nice locks. I can't find that they make any big U locks, though. The padlocks could be put in the disc brakes of a motorcycle, but that doesn't help bicyclists, unless they're willing to use a chain.

          Also, Multilock only seems to make door/gate locks.
        • There is actually a possible answer. If Kryptonite adopted a core that met the UL 437 [lockpicking101.com] standard, we'd know they were reasonably resistant to picking, impressioning and forced entry. Medeco is the best known maker of such cylinders, and Medeco offers a huge array of OEM cylinders for such applications. But they are more expensive.

    • Re:Cool (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 ) <me&brandywinehundred,org> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @10:09PM (#10466570) Journal
      The locks come with a thousand dollors of insurance, I would imagine it is in their best interests to replace them with working models.

  • Google vs. Evening News (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mind21_98 ( 18647 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:03PM (#10465792) Homepage Journal
    I prefer Google News myself. At least I can get news from a variety of sources, not just the local TV station. It would be better though if it filtered out duplicate articles (i.e. ones copied straight from the Associated Press or other wire sources).

    • Re:Google vs. Evening News (Score:5, Funny)

      by heptapod ( 243146 ) <heptapod@gmail.com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:05PM (#10465815) Journal
      It would be better though if it filtered out duplicate articles

      So would Slashdot.
    • It would be better though if it filtered out duplicate articles

      Why? You read Slashdot, don't you?

      • Re:Google vs. Evening News (Score:5, Interesting)

        by js7a ( 579872 ) <james AT bovik DOT org> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:39PM (#10466041) Homepage Journal
        Google News Headlines does indeed have serious problems, but it forces a strict "fourth-party" perspective that I feel can often help the average news consumer.

        Take the Al-Jeezera on Kobe Bryant story example. There you have a perspective that nobody in the U.S. will otherwise be exposed to. Sure, they probably didn't do much in-depth reporting, but who needs in-depth stories on sports figure rape cases, anyway? That's the kind of thing that U.S. media has too much of as it is. I would rather learn what some nameless Al-Jeezera reporter thinks of Kobe Bryant's case than that of the whole cast and crew of Denver TV newsrooms put together.

        Anyway, Google News Search and Alerts are indeed superb. Much better than the MSN and Yahoo alternatives, and I've been reading side-by-side alerts on a variety of topics for several months now.

        • "The worst Democrat is better at jobs and growth than the best Republican"

          I'm not sure I buy your analysis. I think the current president generally inherits the economic situation from the previous one, because change happens slowly. There's a fair amount of lag between policy change and upward or downward trends in the economy.

          Shifting your chart to attribute growth or loss to the previous administration, it comes out like this:

          Jobs Party
          -9.0 Democrat
          +0.6 Democrat
          +0.9 Democrat
          +1.1 Republican
          +1.

          • Lagging a full term? That's a bit much, given that most recessions last about a year or less.

            If you lag one year, things get better for the democrats, as the WaPo article linked from my sig page on the lower right column indicates.

            The president is a legislator, with the final say in signing or vetoing any proposed law. That gives him more power than half of the Congress.

    • Re:Google vs. Evening News (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:07PM (#10465829) Homepage Journal
      Actually, I've found CNN's site to be more useful for breaking news. Google News seems to have a niche in finding a specific story I want info on.

      For example, my wife came to me yesterday and said that she had heard a story on the TV in the gym about some guy's toliet exploding. I searched on Google News and found that some idiot in Salt Lake City had collected gasoline leaking from his car and poured it down his toilet. The gasoline came in contact with the water heater, blew up his bathroom, and set his house on fire. So much for Myth Busters disproving the exploding toilet, eh?
      • my wife came to me yesterday and said that she had heard a story on the TV in the gym about some guy's toliet exploding.

        Now that's what I call news I can go without knowing unless it was happening in my neighbourhood.
      • That's odd.. why would the toilet be plugged to the water heater?

      • I just wish CNN would have someone actually look over their articles before they publish them to their website. They're so full of spelling and other errors (that they obviously just sent through Word) that it's pathetic. A simple read over by one other person would solve that.

        For example, today there was the story about the Canadian sub that is stranded. They quoted someone's family member as stating that the sailor that died "died saving his country." That makes no sense. Obviously they said "servin
        • I just wish CNN would have someone actually look over their articles before they publish them to their website. They're so full of spelling and other errors (that they obviously just sent through Word) that it's pathetic.

          That's because CNN always breaks the story first. I've done some writing myself. Writing a good piece in fifteen minutes is hard. Writing a well edited piece in fifteen minutes is near impossible.
          • Like I said, it wouldn't take more than having one other person read it before it was published. Instead they rely too heavily on things like Word to that for them. It takes 2 minutes to read an article, and usually having someone else read it, they will quickly pick out mistakes.
        • The Prime Minister of Canada actually did say "died saving his country".

          Probably just a bit of a slip of the tongue but the quote was correct.

          <URL:http://www.google.ca/news?hl=en&ned=ca&q=sa vi ng+his+country/>
          • Were you there, or did you actually see it on the news? All those news sources just copy from each other, so mistakes tend to get replicated prety quickly.

            Either that, or maybe Canada is falling apart and we didn't know.
        • Especially their crawler-full of hilarity. I was watching their very early coverage of the Shuttle explosion, and the crawler said something like "Was travelling at twice the speed of light when it exploded" (wish I had a screen capture of it!).
          • > Especially their crawler-full of hilarity. I was watching their very early coverage of the Shuttle explosion, and the crawler said something like "Was travelling at twice the speed of light when it exploded" (wish I had a screen capture of it!).

            Only twice the speed of light? Maybe for that little dinky SpaceShip One contraption.

            When NASA does it, they go all-out. The Space Shuttle was doing nearly 18 times the speed of light [wisc.edu].

            Thank you, CNN...

            ...for ensuring that Dan Rather will have a plac

        • Or maybe the family member reached for the cliche and got it wrong, and the reporter perversely reported just what he heard.

          Maybe CNN should have a special keyboard with a button for each news cliche. That would avoid such errors. You could have:
          • denied the allegations
          • suspected terrorist safehouse
          • protect the environment
          • protestors gathered
          • a court ruled
          • violated the pact
          • under the terms of the settlement
          etc.

    • Re:Google vs. Evening News (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:22PM (#10465938)
      I agree with this. I like the ability to have hundreds of views on one story instantly accessible. It seems to me that the "stories from outside their specialty" peeve is a small one. Usually you can tell relatively quickly from glancing at a site what kind of stories it usually does. And Google usually doesn't link to sites that are too far out there with tabloid style news.

      I've gotten so sick of the mainstream media's useless regurgitation of political bias that I'll take anything over it. It's getting to the point where all the democrats watch CBS and all the Republicans watch Fox and because that's all they hear it just reinforces everyone's notion that all their own views are logical and correct and everyone else's are wrong. We need more news services that use a model like Google News.

  • He sounds jealous (Score:3, Interesting)

    by extra the woos ( 601736 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:03PM (#10465794)
    I never read that article (will go read it now) but he seems a little jealous of google news.. ... I rather LIKE having stuff just picked by a computer.. Eliminates bias AS LONG AS the news sites dont start learning how to make sure they are the ones that google news posts.

    • Re:He sounds jealous (Score:5, Insightful)

      by plover ( 150551 ) * on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:20PM (#10465929) Homepage Journal
      But Google News is showing bias. [slashdot.org] And it's starting to become intentional.
    • News bias? What's that?

      Thanks for confusing me - I was busy reading Dan Rather's book [amazon.com], and you completely messed it up!

    • The system is already being gamed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:26PM (#10465969) Homepage Journal
      Eliminates bias AS LONG AS the news sites dont start learning how to make sure they are the ones that google news posts.

      They already know how to do it. Linguistic anomalies and other factors can skew Google News results. [ojr.org] When you're talking about human events, there's no way to remove bias.

    • You do know someone write the articles, don't you?

      Jason
      ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
    • Google News still has very low coverage of things that are very important to for example Los Angeles residents, based on what real live journalists and reporters on Los Angeles news stations decide is important.

      Where are the 2 hour car chases, where are the radio controlled cars 30 minute segment that I've seen 4 times now (I'm looking at you, fox 11). Where are the investigative reports into g-string related skin infections?

      I'm thinking of switching to the news with Kent Brockman and Arnie in the sky for
    • That reminds me of a anecdote in Steven Levy's Hackers, where Marvin Minsky is being shown a program a guy just wrote.

      At one point in the discussion, Sussman told Minsky that he was using a certain randomizing technique in his program because he didn't want the machine to have any preconceived notions. Minsky said, "Well, it has them, it's just that you don't know what they are."

      True wisdom - computers are not unbiased, they just precisely carry out the biases of the programmers. It doesn't nessec

  • A really insidious way for Google News to make mon (Score:4, Funny)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:06PM (#10465821) Homepage
    Parse the news stories for things like names, places and products and substitute on Google News those stories for Google search links. That way, Google can pull the readers to its paid services and can probably innocently say "but we're just providing readers with the ability to find out more information about the story."

  • Compost-powered Hot Tub? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by modest miser ( 819747 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:06PM (#10465828) Homepage
    From my past experience with compost, I know that it doesn't smell that great, among other things. It would be interesting to see how they deal with this problem. I doubt my friends would want to hang out in a tub with the smell of manure and decomposing material in the air.

    • I wonder if you could use some kind of heat exchanger - you would need to insulate the pipes very well, but you could run the water pipes through the compost bin to heat water passing through them (similar to some solar water heaters) then run the water back to the pump. If you have the pipes mostly underground, provided the earth core temperature wasn't too low, you wouldn't need to have the compost heap right next to the hot tub...

    • Nope, your compost experience was faulty.

      A compost pile that is working well enough to reach 150-160F isn't going to stink. It'll steam, and if you put your face into it you might get a little whiff of ammonia (assuming that there's a little surplus of nitrogen stoking the fire). All you should get from a properly balanced heap is the smell of rich dirt.

      Not the worst aroma to waft by the hot tub, although I'd want to augment it with a hearty red, cedar wood and pheromones.

  • Gun cabinet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SolemnDragon ( 593956 ) * <solemndragon AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:09PM (#10465853) Homepage Journal
    I know it's old news by now, but the gun cabinet maker [stack-on.com] denies that their locks are having this problem- but is offering free lock replacement.

    Old news link about the gun cabinet. [qctimes.com]
    • Hang on,
      they admit the problem.
      They then go on to indicate anybody can obtain a replacement.

      Read the link you gave, it says:

      Our gun cabinets, however, do use a type of tubular lock and tests we conducted indicate that some of these locks are susceptible to being picked through certain manipulations.
      • But right before that they say: We are pleased to report that all of our gun safes and fire resistant safes are not affected by the developments concerning tubular cylinder locks.

        It sounds like they couldn't do it with a fountain pen (maybe they weren't skilled enough), but could with other tools.
    • Read it again. They claim that their gun safes and fire safes are free of this problem, but that some of their cabinets are susceptible.

      Have a look at their product lines [stack-on.com]. Their safes look quite a bit sturdier than their cabinets.

      It's pretty amazing, even on slashdot, when the link poster didn't RTFA.
      • I did read it. That's why i posted it... I read the article AND the web site; the web site claims that some of their cylindrical locks have a problem, but not the problem being touted in the media. The news article has a man claiming that he opened his gun cabinet lock with a pen.

        I posted it merely because i thought that people might want to read the article, and thought that the website deserved a mention for having a lock replacement program and are the cabinetmaker listed in the news article.

  • G-oogle (Score:4, Funny)

    by rjamestaylor ( 117847 ) <rjamestaylor@gmail.com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:09PM (#10465854) Journal
    • Would you want the Google guys to set you up on a blind date?
    What a great idea! Too bad Lotus Domino is squatting at gdate.com, but Blind Dating would put the oogle in Google.

  • Google News - See all the Lemmings (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cthulhuology ( 746986 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:13PM (#10465880) Homepage
    One of the things I have learned from reading Google News is just how few people are doing any acutal reporting. The vast majority of major new organizations are just repeating what they get off of the AP wire, which you might as well read directly. When Google really shines though, is when it finds those out of the way news sources that actually break a non-AP story. During the US military engagements in the middle east, Al-Jezera is often more intelligent than the regurgitated spin releases vomited from CBS/FOX/etc. Google also give you the opportunity to compare coverage on a wide range of sites, aggregating the gamut of viewpoints. I'm sorry, but Google is only "hurting" more established channels by providing more direct access to the fringe press. For the fringes, and those of us who enjoy the range of analysis, this is a huge boon.
    • I wished I could mod you up.

      Very, very true. There's way more parrots than reporters.

    • Re:Google News - See all the Lemmings (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rfsayre ( 255559 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:40PM (#10466055) Homepage
      You are correct, but it's worse than that.

      Consider this:

      Often they cite bizarre news sources for stories way out of their specialty. Why else would we be seeing Al Jazeera as the top listing for a story on Kobe Bryant?

      Maybe the (possibly inadvertant) statement Google is making is that "Journalism" is such garbage that it doesn't matter.
      • Or it's simply that Al Jazeera was the news source that had a story with Kobe Bryant in the headline that Google spidered last - which may just be the bit with the very latest news - or maybe not. When you're googleing you always have to check more than just the first hit, and the fact that the "journalist" didn't know probably reflects on his "journalism" - rather his articles created by googling for the facts.

    • Re:Google News - See all the Lemmings (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:46PM (#10466094) Homepage
      The great thing about Google News is that you can easily see what Reuters, Al-Jazeera, Haaretz, and Xinhua have to say about the same event. If they're all saying roughly the same thing, that probably reflects reality. If there's serious divergence, there's probably major spin control going on somewhere.
      • ... Reuters, Al-Jazeera, Haaretz, and Xinhua ... If they're all saying roughly the same thing, that probably reflects reality.

        Maybe. I suppose it's hard to imagine them all agreeing on the same lie? But maybe they all got their story from the same ``eyewitness'' (who happened to be shooting of his mouth in the bar where the reporters hang out), and maybe this eyewitness was lying.

        If there's serious divergence, there's probably major spin control going on somewhere.

        Yes, but where? Any one of them

        • But maybe they all got their story from the same ``eyewitness'' (who happened to be shooting of his mouth in the bar where the reporters hang out), and maybe this eyewitness was lying.

          this isn't the Recon roleplaying game, where the only location that reporters can be encountered was in bars. Besides, I doubt that Al-Jazeera reporters are in the same booze-hound league as most western reporters, or if they are, I suspect they prop up the bars in different neighbourhoods.

    • I only get my information from trusted sources, such as the Ministry of Truth. In fact, I just checked, and my new MS Trusted Computing(TM) XBOX-ME didn't let me access the untrusted terrorist website you linked to. With dangerous attitudes like yours, how did you even get access to The Secure Internet, brother? You can tell me; I won't turn you in.

    • Re:Google News - See all the Lemmings (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @12:26AM (#10467089) Journal
      Yeah, this guy's criticism of Google News is just sour grapes over lost viewers. News sites are so hungry for viewers that they use stupid tactics like not providing relevant links so you won't leave their site, even when the links are practically the whole point of the story (like stories about websites). The quality of the copy at smaller news sites may be slightly worse, but maybe Google News's success is showing that good copywriting isn't as important as journalists would like to think.

      This guy comes off sounding pretty arrogant: "It's clear to a journalist that this system was designed by someone who has no idea what's important in the news." If people are reading Google news, it's because it has the news they want to read. That's what's important in the news. Not some editor's idea of what's important, but what readers think is important.

    • I kinda like clicking on links to see how the Hindi Times or Al Jazeera covers an American news story. Sometimes, a nonamerican point of view is enlightening. But, to often, it will be the exact same text that appears in most American newspapers. When that happens, I'm left wondering why an Indian or an Arab would want to read that story, but I'm gyped out of the POV thing.

  • Google news - algorithm selection == impartial? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by francisew ( 611090 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:18PM (#10465912) Homepage

    I'm not sure how impartial google news really is.

    Since results must be biased in some way by the number of sources reporting a story, and the majority of our sources are (arguably) biased, won't the results come out skewed anyways. Regardless of Google's impartiality, I wonder how much of a chance smaller and important stories really have of making it to the surface? A kitten stuck in a tree covered by several newspapers might be able to creep pretty high, but a massacre in some remote country may rank pretty low.

    Then again, Google is pure genius, so let's all not worry. ;)

  • so what if I WANT something different in news? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gambit3 ( 463693 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:22PM (#10465943) Homepage Journal
    I already get the Dallas Morning News, USA Today and the NYTimes, electronically, in my inbox every morning. I KNOW what "the journalists" give me as what THEY think is "important in the news."

    What about those times when I DON'T want a journalist to decide for me what's "importantn"??

    I think Google provides an excellent service.

  • Populist news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zaxios ( 776027 ) <zaxios@gmail.com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:23PM (#10465948) Journal
    While it may nail the top headlines, Google News can't do anything but that. There is no consideration of comprehensiveness of a story at one site over another.

    What a silly point. Google News doesn't try to tell you what to read. It gathers the most commonly reported events into headlines and intends the user to sort through them. As a way of organizing news reports, it's unparalleled. Just like traditional Google Search, it doesn't make the choice of resource for you (that's what our discernment is for), it merely organizes your choices so they are accessible. Perhaps from the perspective of a traditional journalist, the idea of a broad range of news sources at the fingertips of the reader rather blind dependency on a few well-known outlets is worrying because it threatens the old way of doing things. Personally, I think more accessibility and more choice for the reader will only make online news more competitive and allow quality articles outside of the conventional vendors to show themselves more easily.

  • Quit whining (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:29PM (#10465989)

    This ultimately hurts news outlets who work very hard to put together the best stories and draw traffic to their pages.

    If Google News is that much worse than traditional news outlets "working very hard", then those traditional news outlets won't have anything to fear, will they? If Google News is so "erratic", then obviously readers will flock to the traditional news outlets, won't they? It's funny how these comments were made by somebody from the traditional news outlets, isn't it?

    Let me put it to you this way: Would you want the Google guys to set you up on a blind date? Guess what? They already did.

    >Looks around< err... no, I'm pretty sure they didn't. What a stupid thing to say.

  • Google news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by erick99 ( 743982 ) <homerun@gmail.com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:31PM (#10465997)
    From TFA:

    Often they cite bizarre news sources for stories way out of their specialty. Why else would we be seeing Al Jazeera as the top listing for a story on Kobe Bryant?

    So? I am smart enough to click on the part that says, for example, "..and 650 more.." and look for sources that make more sense. I like having the option to read five or six or 50 different write-up's of the same story. I can tell when the first source or two are inappropriate and I can move on. I suspect the person who wrote in prefers the CNN or FOX, etc. format of deciding what should be the news for the day. Google dumps it all out there and in quantity. For a news junky, I think Google is great! I do read the CNN online news as well but sometimes I am astounded at the difference between CNN's version (which can lean left just as the Fox version can lean right) versus the BBC version or one of the India newspapers.

  • Before they had their news aggregator there were several others such as NewsHub [newshub.com] and even Yahoo had one for a little while (though recently NewsHub's server performance is much slower, it started when Lycos became more visible on the home page). I agree with others that more filtering features needs to be added or publicized at the Google one to search by region, by newswire, etc.

  • The public just can't think . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by erick99 ( 743982 ) <homerun@gmail.com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:36PM (#10466023)
    All of which would be fine except that so many people go to Google for news that they have come to think its actually a really good source for news.

    Does he have any idea how insulting that is? Why do so many journalists not only want to decide what the news is, they also want you to get it from certain sources only and they don't want you think critically about the news or the source. Well, that's how I feel, anyway. Bastards.

  • This Salkever Guy Is a Shmuck (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LuYu ( 519260 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:36PM (#10466025) Homepage Journal

    While I understand his point, is that not the reason people go to Google for news (eg: to avoid or distribute human bias)? This just sounds to me like he is angry that people are not reading the news the way he wants them to.

    This is what Salkever's statements sound like to me.

    Quote:

    It's clear to a journalist that this system was designed by someone who has no idea what's important in the news.
    Translation:
    It's clear to a journalist that this system was designed by someone who has no idea how to properly slant the news.

    Quote:

    There is no consideration of comprehensiveness of a story at one site over another.
    Translation:
    There is no consistent consideration of comprehensiveness of what we in the industry have decided to include.

    Quote:

    This ultimately hurts news outlets who work very hard to put together the best stories and draw traffic to their pages.
    Translation:
    They are not playing by our rules... Boohoo!

    I do not use Google News, but at least on the surface, it is a system that appears to be unfriendly to the obvious and harmful bias of US news sources. It also seems to me that reading a bunch of news from totally random websites might actually contribute to more open mindedness (something I, for one, would like to see more of in the US and in the rest of the world).

    I think the simple point is: Readers are responsible for picking and choosing what they believe out of the news. While this has always been true, Google News is making it more obvious by sprinkling, sometimes very liberally, the news with opinions that are not standard within the news industry (and some opinions that are just downright absurd). This is probably a good thing.

    • Re:This Salkever Guy Is a Shmuck (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dont_think_twice ( 731805 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:42PM (#10466066) Homepage
      I think his point is somewhat valid - I really don't feel that Google News does a very good job of picking the best articles on a subject to make the front page. Quite often, I will want to read about a story, and the couple of sources listed on the front page will all be two paragraph summaries that provide absolutely no detail. I often have to search through the list of sources to find a decent story.

      I really don't know why this is. Maybe it is just really hard to properly organize news. Considering how good of a job Google did with web search, I would expect more out of them. Maybe we just need some startup with brand new ideas to revolutionize the news aggregration business.

      All that said, the article submitter (Salkever) did sound like a whiny jerk. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with computer aggregrated search results - Google has just been doing a pretty poor job of it so far.

      • picking? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mblase ( 200735 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @09:54PM (#10466502)
        I really don't feel that Google News does a very good job of picking the best articles on a subject to make the front page.

        This argument is applicable to any Google search. Google doesn't "pick" the best news articles or search results, it basically sorts them by popularity. If a lot of organizations report on a particular subject, those articles rise to the top of the page. If an article discusses a particular search result more deeply, that article rises to the top of its search results.

        Maybe it is just really hard to properly organize news.

        When you can give us a workable definition of "properly", I'll consider your arguments. As it is, even longtime news editors often have trouble deciding which articles deserve headline-page-one status and which ones ought to be bumped to the bottom. It's ultimately a matter of what one person considers important--except for Google, which considers what several hundred people consider to be important. It may not be better, but it's certainly no worse.

        • Re:picking? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by dont_think_twice ( 731805 )
          Google doesn't "pick" the best news articles or search results, it basically sorts them by popularity.

          Semantics. The articles that make the front page are "picked", whether it is by a human or a computer. I realize that Mr. Google is not personally reading every news source and deciding what to highlight.

          If an article discusses a particular search result more deeply, that article rises to the top of its search results.

          Maybe this is the intent, but currently, Google News does a terrible job of put

          • Re:picking? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by 2nd Post! ( 213333 )
            The most informative and thorough news articles are those which cover the most aspects of a story, and provide the most detail. In general, this implies that a longer article will be more informative and thorough, although exceptions are possible. In addition, providing insight into a story from multiple ideological viewpoints will contribute to the thoroughness of a story, and illogical and poorly formed arguments will detract from the informativeness of an article.

            How exactly can a program decide what
        • Google News articles are "picked" by a wide base of news editors all over the world. These are editors doing their job the old-fashioned way, determining for their readership what news to cover. The difference is that the reader now has a choice to see what storys are considered newsworthy by thousands of editors all over the world, and then possibly, read various points of view. All these articles are considered newsworthy by some editor somewhere in the world, just not the same much smaller group that
      • Quite often, I will want to read about a story, and the couple of sources listed on the front page will all be two paragraph summaries that provide absolutely no detail. I often have to search through the list of sources to find a decent story.

        I don't know how Google News works, but I would guess it used similar principles to Google Search -- that is, link popularity is an important factor.

        This would explain a bias toward shorter stories -- the ones most likely to get a link are the ones who break the s
  • Trying to confuse us all with unexpected and possibly illuminating news sources!

    Shame on them for providing a portal for world views and domestic issues.

  • as discussed elsewhere... (Score:5, Informative)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @08:47PM (#10466103)
    Kudos to Kryptonite for responding, and quickly

    Considering that the U lock pen opening technique was discovered circa 1992, I wouldn't call Kryptonite's response quick, exactly.

    Nice of them, yes, but quick, no.
  • "Asshat blasts Google News for Not Playing Ball with Big Media"

    A curmudgeonly newsjerk today blasted the cutting edge and 21st-century-thinking Google News today, saying that they were "meanies" or something like that. Industry experts agree that this person is not to be taken seriously. He will probably be rounded up for the nuthouse before day's end [. . .]

  • Google News and metamoderation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Friday October 08, 2004 @12:58AM (#10467249) Homepage Journal
    I read Google News for the same reason I metamoderate slashdot. It gives me a random glimpse of some things I wouldn't read otherwise.

    It's not the best view, but it's an interestingly quirky one. But I also read other sources for a more consistent view, the same way I read the Slashdot homepage.

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