I found a great quote that pretty much nails my view of the situation: "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge." -- Erwin Knoll
As an experienced computer scientist, I can assure you that Dr. Newcomer's evaluation is technically impressive.
Which leads me to that first-hand knowledge.
For instance, the "quotes" from me in the last half of this article were nearly made up from the whole cloth -- at least the quotes in paragraphs four and five were reasonably accurate (notice I didn't put scare quotes around the word quotes in the current sentence!).
And I have plenty of other instances of this in articles that thankfully aren't on the web any more.
But the most galling is when they just decide to throw every quote and idea out because it doesn't fit their pre-conceived story line. Sound familiar? You bet! And this is with "highly technical" journalists (scare quotes required) -- that is, journalists who write for publications sold to technologists and scientists.
And you know what? Before becoming initiated to the ways of "technical rags", I used to read them rather quite a lot more too.
Which leads me to another quote: "He who can, does. He who cannot,
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