...a lot of legitimate media is really bad.
For example look at this article dated october 23 this year.
Can AMD Get Off This Treadmill?
It's a perennial also-ran to Intel in microprocessors, and that's not likely to change.
That is arguably an objective, if not absolutely true statement (note the qualification in it), and I must be in at least the 80th percentile of rabid AMD partisans. If AMD would just get to 30% market share, I'll be very well rewarded.
But that's not the point (in fact there are at least two). First of all, as a Cal gal, you ought to be able to distinguish between fact and opinion. If a reporter writes, "According to Hector Ruiz, AMD is #1 in Poland", then I'd like to believe the guy really said that, even if AMD is #2. Or if he wrote merely, "AMD is #1 in Poland", then I'd like to know what is the source.
Secondly, there is an axiom in journalism that the reporter always knows less than the people involved. If the house next door burned down and you read about it in the paper, you'd probably see that some errors were made in the reporting. Similarly, if you know about a product and you read the reports in the paper, you'll probably realize that they simultaneously exaggerate the benefits of it and disparage its prospects.
With respect to Amy J's beliefs and anecdotes, she seems to think that encouraging "startups" like her employer is what might make California and the U.S. great. Intel was founded in '68 and went public in '72 when they were already profitable and highly successful. I've been reading Amy J's postings for more than four years and her company never made a dime. They're a leftover from the excesses of the late 1990s and seem to be in the 40% of "walking dead" investments that VCs talk about (which don't go out of business, yet never succeed). Just because her CFO can spring for a 3 GHz Pentium 4 because she says she needs it doesn't mean her chances for cashing in her stock options are any better than my daughter's when she looks for the pony on the lawn on Christmas morning. |
