On Tue, 18 Jun 1996, Randy Bush wrote:

...

http://www.infoworld.com/pageone/opinions/metcalfe/metcalfe.htm

take the amazingly high error rate in just the simple facts in this kind of press (far higher than the packet loss, but at least not as damaging). extrapolate that error rate to the international news in the front of the daily newspaper. this is a deeply scary thought.

Yes. This is an awakening that I had late last year. But I went one step further and extrapolated it to the people whose names are in the news, not just the reporters. Scary indeed. However, Infoworld is not all bad and there is even one columnist, Nick Petreley, who is not afraid to admit that the press is often clueless and who goes out looking seriously at stuff the common wisdom rejects as foolishness. And because Infoworld is on the Internet (enabled by UNO WHO) he can get email feedback to show him that he is not alone in his thoughts. And Infoworld is also doing a mini-USENET thing that lets the readers talk back in PUBLIC to the magazine. This is the real power of the net coming to the fore, even in the highly commercialised world of a computer industry magazine. Michael Dillon ISP & Internet Consulting Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com