wheresthefire - Slashdot User

Submission + - Study Finds Apple is U.S. Media Darling (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by wheresthefire on Monday September 27, 2010 @07:24PM

wheresthefire writes: In a yearlong study that is sure to surprise few /. readers, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that Apple is a darling of the U.S. media (with Google, Twitter, and Facebook in second through fourth places). According to the San Jose Mercury News, this is because readers prefer stories about Apple (and AllThingsD has a great quote from a NYT staffer here.) Presumably due to Antennagate, 58% of stories on the topic of Apple's product innovation were more negative than positive the past twelve months, while only 7% on the topic of competition described Apple's products as more anti-competitive than not, and only 27% of articles on Apple's fanbase described it as more devoted than for other companies.

Comment Re:Peer Reviewed (Score 1) 389

by wheresthefire on Saturday May 22, 2010 @10:17PM (#32310808) Attached to: Quantum Teleportation Achieved Over 16 km In China

My thoughts were with the original poster, there is a huge (actually Huge, wait I mean HUGE) problem with plagiarism/fake results/fraud/etc. in China. There have been cases of scientists who were otherwise well-regarded getting away with this for years, before the fraud was revealed. Have Dr. Pan's results been consistently replicated by others in the past, whatever his "status" in the profession?

Comment Journalistic privilege, lost property, etc. (Score 1) 1204

by wheresthefire on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @03:06PM (#32003290) Attached to: Police Seize Computers From Gizmodo Editor

CNet has a nice summary of the main issues: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20003539-37.html

It seems like this "theft" is being blown way out of proportion, for several reasons:
1. The device in question is a cell phone.
2. The finder seems to have made several attempts to contact the apparent owner to return the device, and was told it wasn't theirs.
3. When the owner of the device did surface, the phone was immediately returned.

Regardless of what happened between #2 and #3 above, would the police normally waste any time on an incident like this?

Let me try to pre-emptively respond to some objections. Regarding #1, the only reason this particular cell phone was "valuable" was because of who it belonged to (Apple). If it had turned out to have been a fake, it would have been virtually worthless. So is this really a huge felony? Here's another example: Suppose the device in question had been a t-shirt (value $10), lost by some celebrity (say Brittney Spears). Of course, the t-shirt can be sold for outrageous sums of money on eBay or wherever, if it can be determined that the shirt is genuine. Is it a felony to sell the shirt? Is it really that big a deal? If the shirt was promptly returned to Brittney as soon as she came forward to claim it, would the police be giving this any attention at all?

I say no.

Sharp Rise In Jailing of Online Journalists; Iran May Just Kill Them 233

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @10:20AM from the your-ethics-may-vary dept.

bckspc writes "The Committee to Protect Journalists has published their annual census of journalists in prison. Of the 136 reporters in prison around the world on December 1, 'At least 68 bloggers, Web-based reporters, and online editors are imprisoned, constituting half of all journalists now in jail.' Print was next with 51 cases. Also, 'Freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed worldwide, a dramatic recent increase that reflects the evolution of the global news business.' China, Iran, Cuba, Eritrea, and Burma were the top 5 jailers of journalists." rmdstudio writes, too, with word that after the last few days' protest there, largely organized online, the government of Iran is considering the death penalty for bloggers and webmasters whose reports offend it.

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