Y2KNewswire: Comments

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On an earlier thread I was asked to read a couple Y2Knewswire articles. There has been a robust discussion of the "Systemic" article:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0014iW

I think Hoff's essay on the application of statistics to "mission critical" systems is worth a link:

http://x38.deja.com/=gh/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=419120047&CONTEXT=931809989.1936719891&hitnum=4

I had not read the Pentagon testing article, but when I did, it was disturbing. The author at Y2Knewswire worked overtime to discredit the testing effort... without adequate information. For example, the Y2Knewswire focused on the fact "only" 44 systems were tested. This is meaningless unless you know how large the 44 systems were. I decided to check the original DoD press release:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul1999/n07141999_9907142.html

Y2Knewswire conveniently ignored the following information:

"The 44 systems tested conduct about $80 billion worth of DoD business annually, said Zach Goldstein, DoD's director of logistics information systems. He said they process over 2.5 billion transactions -- by some estimates, twice the electronic commerce conducted on the Internet by the rest of the entire country last year."

Goldstein said testing was vital because the systems support almost 2 million service members and civilian employees by processing requests for almost everything from buttons to bullets, from food to spare parts. If service members use it, shoot it, eat it or wear it, chances are it's ordered through the complex networks of computer systems tested July 13, he said."

I know we have some "big iron" folks on the forum, but 2.5 billion transactions amounting to $80 billion dollars seems like a big set of systems. For a matter of scale, IBM had revenues of $20 billion last year.

DoD will release the formal test results later this month, and I am interested on how Y2Knewswire will spin the story. In my opinion, I think it's clear the goal of Y2Knewswire is not objective, balanced journalism.

Regards,

-- Mr. Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), July 16, 1999

Answers

Not to nitpick, but IBM's gross revenues for 1998 totaled $81.6 billion last year (according to info on the www.ibm.com). Regardless-- large sums of money we're talking about here...

-- Don (whytocay@hotmail.com), July 16, 1999.

My mistake, I typed in the quarterly number.

"For the three months ended 3/99, total revenues rose 15% to $20.32 billion."

Is it me, or do those do columns get harder to read every year? (laughter)

Good catch.

Regards,

-- Mr. Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), July 16, 1999.


Mr. Decker

You said

"In my opinion, I think it's clear the goal of Y2Knewswire is not objective, balanced journalism. "

Do you really think it's any worse than CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN?

I agree they printed information that was incomplete. Incomplete information can be taken, and interpreted, out of context. But this seems to be the standard of journalism today. (If your saying that journalists grab what few facts they can to support a preconcieved notion and this is another example, I guess it's up to us to figure out if the claim is valid) And I don't think the size of the systems really are the most important factor. ("What" and "How much" are important considerations for triage). But how much of the total software portfolio of critical systems does it make up? If this system was made of an OS, several hundred applications and hardware/firmware that represented 95% of all the crital systems (meaning the other critical systems use the same applications and now they have been certified as compliant on these 44 systems) then the DOD has made good progress. However, if the total number of critical OS, applications and HW/FW represented in these 44 systems represent 15% of critical systems, well, then, things aren't that great.

Perhaps they are having a remediation "banana".

Other things to consider is how many of the total lines of code of critical systems does this represent. And how many man hours per system does remedation require? (Think of this as an arcane, undocumented system vs the plug in the software upgrade and reboot remediation situation).

Just some other things to consider.

Watch six and keep your...

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.net), July 16, 1999.


Another recent thread on this is...

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0015EE

"DoD Gonna Make It."

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 16, 1999.


Wide open, if the DoD has some 2100 critical systems and logistics just tested 44 of their systems, my guess is that number represents the critical DoD systems within the responsibility of logistics commands. The DoD is a fairly large organization and logistics doesn't represent the bulk of critical systems, my guess it that strategic air command, the missile commands, the national command authorities, the warning missions, the fighting forces (within all the services) take up the remaining some 2050 critical systems and I've seen reports on their testing (some completed last year).

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), July 16, 1999.


Maria stated:

" my guess is that number represents the critical DoD systems within the responsibility of logistics commands."

Maria, at this stage of the game I think we NEED something more substantial than "your guess".

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 16, 1999.


How many years experience do you have with the DoD, Ray? Mine is more than twenty.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), July 16, 1999.

Maria, I have worked on enough government projects to understand the total ineptness of their workings. The Federal Government is imploding in its own pile of regulations.

The Federal Government's y2k remediation efforts have been directly effected by this mountain of CRAP.

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 16, 1999.


Ray

I've noticed one CONSTANT in you Ray. You don't like the U.S or the folks who run it. Why do you stay here? I'm serious dude, you chained to a tree or something?

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), July 16, 1999.


IMO Yes. Re: Y2kNewswire, I have proven to my satisfaction that:

They print information that is incomplete. Incomplete information that can be taken, and interpreted, out of context. They grab what few facts they can to support a preconcieved notion. And they do this intentionally and consistently "eyes_open". I once dissected an article from Y2kNewswire which I felt sounded very suspicious. I did as Mr Decker had and compared it to a number of other publications/reports from which Newswire had based their comments. They went far beyond just printing incomplete information. They actually began a sentence stating a (their) position and suddenly inserted a supporting quote from AP which was actually totally unrelated to the specific position they were trying to build. Although they used quotation marks, this sentence was constructed in a subtle enough manner as to "fool" the less observant reader into believing the entire sentence was produced by AP. Very clever, very devious and very "dishonest". In another "misdirection" in that article I found them using a quote from an official which, upon examination, they had taken, printed and used entirely out of context so it would add credence to what they were saying. BS! These were just 2 examples of the deceit I found in that article. There were more, and from that day forward I have never trusted a word they (or Worldnetdaily) have to say. I did my homework and I am able to understand why so many people call Y2kNewswire - "Y2kLoosewire". What amazes me is the fact that so many people on this forum shoot holes through some publications, yet are so blind to the deceit inherent in others.

-- CD (not@here.com), July 16, 1999.



Incompleteness in the newsmedia seems to be their way of life. Years ago I was a witness as an aircraft crashed to the ground in Dallas, Texas. I saw it happen. I was on the scene in the aftermath. I then watched the television reports and reports in the newspaper. I would not have even recognized the event from what the reporters were saying. They were not on the scene. This isn't surprising though because everyone evaluates circumstances differently. Psychological studies show that people watching an event very often "see" different things. This can be colored by many things - their backgrounds, what they were expecting to see, even things as mundane as what they had just watched on television. My observations relative to much that I see in the media is that they quote what they are trying to prove and they edit and cite to support their claims.

-- Jean (jmacmanu@bellsouth.net), July 16, 1999.

Deano commented:

"I've noticed one CONSTANT in you Ray. You don't like the U.S or the folks who run it. Why do you stay here? I'm serious dude, you chained to a tree or something? "

Deano, did you put an American flag out on Memorial Day or the Forth of July?

Your Pal, Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 16, 1999.


Jean:

Your observation is both accurate and simplistic. Of course the media are victims of the Rashomon principle as much as anyone else, but it isn't a function of deliberate spin in the vast majority of cases. Almost all the time, a sincere effort is made to present the story as it really happened, as well as they can understand it.

In a recent series of experiments, the experimenters showed their subjects a video tape, gave an explanation, and made the subjects take a quiz about what they'd seen. For every question, there was a range of answers provided by the subjects, some wildly inaccurate. After several iterations, it became obvious that people were getting their notion of the gist of the video, and filling in the details NOT from the video itself, but from their own prejudices and convictions. In fact, it was quite common for subjects to become very upset when the video was replayed in slow motion, showing their answers to be totally false. The subjects (on the whole) *refused* to admit that they were wrong, instead insisting that a doctored video had been substituted for the original (even though they could see that no opportunity for such substitution could have existed).

People in the media are no different from the subjects in these experiments. They're people. They bring with them the biases of their profession -- keep the story simple, make it entertaining, work very quickly (get the 'scoop' first), don't waste money. And naturally, these biases can distort the 'real' story even if the reporters are completely neutral to the facts.

Y2Knewswire is a different phenomenon. They aren't trying to be reasonably objective (but fallibly human) reporters. They are *advocates*. They are *not* neutral with respect to the facts. They are acting as lawyers rather than judges.

I have to laugh at the complaint that y2knewswire's credibility is undermined if their bias becomes excessively flagrant (to the point of outright fabrication). Such flagrance merely *illustrates* more clearly what they're up to. Basically the complainers are saying, "We don't care how hard you spin this story (so long as we agree with the spin), so long is you don't lie. Lies alert people to the spin. We don't want that."

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), July 16, 1999.


Flint, thanks for your previous comments on y2k NewsWire. Could you please give us your thoughts on CNN and the quality of it's reporting.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 16, 1999.


You know, the most hilarious thing here is seeing LoserWire discussed as some form of "journalism".

LoserWire is a front for Y2kSupply, and is about marketing, PR, and $$$. Pure and simple. It's an experiment to see how much money Mike Adams can make using his "tehcniques".

Don't believe me? How about taking Mike Adams word for it:

http: //www.integritywebmarketing.com/index.asp?pageid=bio

Michael A. Adams is the original creator of e-mail personalization technology and launched 'E-Mail Merge' software in 1993. He holds a (pending) patent on a search engine ranking improvement technology, he designed and programmed a real-time database-driven web site technology, and he continues to pursue new technologies and techniques that allow a small staff or department to experience highly-successful, low-overhead Internet marketing campaigns. He launched and ran a high-tech public relations firm for three years and created the world's first PR e-mail automation tool, Campaign, which later became a software success.

In 1999, in an effort to fine tune his web marketing techniques, Michael launched a six-month experiment to determine what kind of revenues are possible when combining his proprietary techniques and technologies with a high-awareness topic. The result? In six months, with the help of only one employee, he created a subscriber base of over 50,000 people and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of information products while offering an open-ended, 100% moneyback guarantee and providing a valuable public service.

Spurred on by the success of his techniques, in mid-1999, Michael decided to share his know-how with Internet marketing professionals. In May, he launched IntegrityWebMarketing.com.

Michael has an interdisciplinary degree in technical writing and a minor in economics. He strongly supports U.S. veterans and has donated software and thousands of dollars in cash to veterans organizations such as the Disabled American Veterans. He lives in Cody, Wyoming and continues to study linguistics, history and electronic marketing.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-deja.com), July 16, 1999.



Evening Hoff, thanks for your comments on y2k Newswire. I have had a great deal of difficulty finding one of you Pollys to comment on this rather serious thread:

Cities Not Ready for y2k

Your comments would be much appreciated.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 16, 1999.


No Hoffmeister, the most hilarious thing is the fact that some people will just turn a blind-eye to what has been written both here and on many other threads in the last 2 days. The sad thing is that they will continue to link to Loosewire and newbies who stumble in here will be quickly sucked into the mire. What's worse is that many of the regulars here who are aware of the Loosewire muck, won't even warn 'em, let alone toss 'em a rope.

-- CD (not@here.com), July 16, 1999.

Evening CD, thanks for your comments on y2k Newswire. I have had a great deal of difficulty finding one of you Pollys to comment on this rather serious thread:

Cities Not Ready for y2k

Your comments would be much appreciated.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 16, 1999.


Why good evening Ray. And a civil "tip o' the hat" to you too. You're not yourself today. I noticed the improvement immediately. This is rather pleasant I must say. Let's move on now shall we.

First things first; You wrote: "thanks for your comments on y2k Newswire". You are quite welcome Ray. I know how dark it can be out there for you sometimes and I hope I've provided you with a "flashlight". I also hope you think of me whenever you see a Y2kNewswire article. That will be thanks enough.

You then wrote: "I have had a great deal of difficulty finding one of you Pollys to comment on this rather serious thread:" I gotta be honest with you here Ray. Truth is, you have a great deal of difficulty finding *anybody* to comment on *anything* you post. I'm sorry if that's too blunt but I've been watching and it is all too true. Frankly, I'm only responding to you this time because I began to feel sorry for you. It's gotta be tough being ignored all the time. I'm pointing this out for your own good Ray. Perhaps you can get past the non stop "polly bug spray" "jokes" and actually put your mind to contributing something of substance. You know, get away from the one or two liner stuff that only parrots the thoughts of others. Work on it. And stop attacking me on so many threads. You might find it was good advice.

Moving on...I see you called me a "polly". No Ray, pointing out ignorance and misinformation does not make one a polly. There ya go jumpin' to conclusions again. Work on it. You might find it was good advice.

Finally, you asked me to comment on a specific article posted on a VMC "mainstream" CBS site. I went to the site, and here's my comment...yeah, scarey stuff huh.

Now then Ray, I enjoyed our pleasant little heart-to-heart chat, but please don't take this to mean I'd like to have more of them in the future. That would be very disappointing. So long my friend. May you live long and prosper.

-- CD (not@here.com), July 16, 1999.


Ya know, one of the best things about a Republican administration is knowing that the traditional press will watch it like a hawk looking for lunch. Miss that. Might have helped.

Newswire has frittered its currency too often for me but there certainly aren't any newsy heros out there elsewhere either.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), July 16, 1999.


As George Wallace said in his PRIME, "There aint a dime's worth of difference between the Dems. and the Repubs.

That was 30 years ago!, it is much worse today! Socialist Party A and Socialist Part B. Just make sure you vote :~). Yeah sure, right!

See U.S. Tax Payers Party and The League of the South for an alternative, www.dixienet.org

Deo Vindicie!

BR

-- brother rat (rldabney@usa.net), July 16, 1999.


CD,

Ray asked you to please comment upon the fact that

CITIES ARE NOT READY FOR Y2K.

Now that you have presented your extensive answer, I have another question for you CD:

Are you deaf, blind or just plain dumb?

-- George (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), July 16, 1999.


George- See my comment above regarding the article. It's in there somewhere albeit not to the extent Ray was probably hoping for. And for the record George, Ray appears to have a habit of posting smart ass responses to my posts on various threads throughout this forum. He chose to attack me, it wasn't the other way around. And in light of your last sentence, I see there's no point in continuing this or future conversations with you either.

-- CD (not@here.com), July 16, 1999.

Lots of folks don't care where they get their Y2k news, and some consider the "mainstream media" the absolute worst place. I, personally, don't trust news put out by ANY Arial Marketing site, including:

www.criticalsupplies.com www.y2kfacts.com www.y2kinformer.com www.y2knewswire.com www.y2kcody.com

-- Anita (spoonera@msn.com), July 16, 1999.


Anita- Speaking of Mike Adams and Arial Marketing, you may find this interesting...

Link

-- CD (not@here.com), July 17, 1999.


CD,

Is "scary stuff" ALL you have to say about the article??

Anita,

What news outlets do you prefer??

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), July 17, 1999.


CD:

Thanks. I didn't have that nifty tool when I did my research. I've updated my files with this information.

-- Anita (spoonera@msn.com), July 18, 1999.


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