If you read the article, it's actually not true at all...
FOX News. 'nuff said.
Measure twice, cut three times, start over. Repeat as necessary.
Ghee, I saw it on Time.com earlier. Do they get the same comment? Actually, I guess I would lump all "news" places into the same bucket, so to me the answer would be, yes, same comment.
A printer making smoke is not the same thing as a flaming printer. Stories like that should come with a video.
I can likely provide examples of this from most every news source. I will single out CNN given the silly rhetoric regarding FOX and my assumptions on your point of view. Remember when it came out that they were purposely reporting slanted / wrong information in Iraq so that they would be allowed to stay in country?
That said, how did this degrade into news bashing? Is it because a news agency reported research claims at Columbia. The article as presented at the link lists the outrageous claims by Columbia as well as the response from HP - as has pretty much all coverage of the event.
These days, hacking is big business. As such, most hackers are more interested in compromising your system so that they can use it as a for rent system for things such as spreading spam or denial of service attacks on other systems. There are notable exceptions, of course; for example, spreading a virus that targets the equipment used by Iran to refine uranium.
Given that HP has hardware to prevent the fuser from over-heating to the point of actual fire, I think that Columbia would need to recreate the hack on a printer manufacturer that did not include that protection.
News agencies can report/makeup any story they want, without having anything to back it up.
So, take any story they report with a grain of salt.
Never, under any circumstances, consume a laxative and sleeping pill, on the same night
As far as I know, the news is not required to provide any factual information, even if it is presented as being factual. So long as laws are otherwise not broken, they can tell you stuff that's willfully biased, false, etc and there is no legal recourse. They can also fire "journalists" (I couldn't even point to an unbiased journalist anywhere, they're mostly teleprompter readers and opinion writers now, anyway, aren't they?) who refuse to participate in providing intentionally devious, deletory or misleading information.
Last edited by David Weaver; 12-02-2011 at 2:22 PM.
Everyone has a bias. For news, the bias will usually determine what is covered, and how it is covered. Even if there is little bias, ignorance frequently plays a part. I was watching an interesting show on the learning channel that discussed that they found three different types of stuff that guys have that girls do not that is ultimately responsible for making rug rats. The science was all very interesting until they spun this story about how one type evolved because men were insecure in their relationships with women. So, did they have an agenda, or were they simply so unaware of how things worked it was pitiable; I could not say, but, based on the show, I decided that if I wanted to fly that I would evolve to have wings (or jet engines).
A friend that has one of those crazy IQs (I have a couple friends like that) was fond of telling me that journalists should NEVER be allowed to read medical studies because they could not fully understand them. Well, this guy who helps with medical research called me to tell me that he should purchase a cat for all of his friends because research showed that families with cats have a lower incident rate of allergies. I have had one, and only one, class in statistics, and I immediately saw the flaw in that statement (the group is self selecting, people with allergies don't usually have cats.... because they are allergic). Based on the numbers, the most dangerous place to be is a hospital because more people die there than about anyplace else.
Wow.... rambling. Sorry!
Laboratories have been shown to increase cancer levels in rats.... so, let the rats go and their cancer levels will go down.
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