[ih] Ingrid Burrington on North Virginia

[Patrick W. Gilmore]

On Jan 11, 2016, at 12:38 PM, Bill Woodcock <woody at pch.net> wrote:
> On Jan 11, 2016, at 7:01 AM, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick at ianai.net> wrote:
>> 
>> At the very top of the article:
>> 
>> UP TO 70 PERCENT OF GLOBAL INTERNET TRAFFIC GOES THROUGH NORTHERN VIRGINIA
>> 
>> She lost all credibility before I got past the first sentence.
> 
> Up to 70% also runs through Aaron Hughes’ house, as he just pointed out.  Up to 70% runs out my, uh…  Anyway.  “Up to” is a definition of range, not a specific individual quantity.
> 
> And as John Curran just pointed out, the author of the piece doesn’t write the headline, to the credibility of the two aren’t connected.

As I told John Levine privately when he pointed out something similar: Pthhhhhhh.

This is not a peer-reviewed journal, being that pedantic implies you are ignoring the rest of the article. (Wait, that might be good….)

Communication is about getting an idea from my head into your head. To any normal human being conversant in the English language, the idea being communicated is clear. And the factual basis for it - or lack thereof - is just as clear.

As for the headline not matching the article, the text includes:
	Today, up to 70 percent of Internet traffic worldwide travels through this region

In fairness, I should say the rest of that sentence is "as the Loudon county economic-development board cheerfully notes in its marketing materials.” So the reporter took at quote from a source with clear and deep reasons to exaggerate, puts that into an article un-critically, and even follows the quote (very next sentence) with: "An unfathomable amount of that traffic is from AWS.”


Look, it doesn’t really matter. Journalists are nearly always spreading some misinformation, especially when dealing with topics which require specialized knowledge. I just get annoyed when people who should and can trivially easily know better spread stupidity.


> I have no opinion on the credibility of the article.

The article is essentially a long-form ad for AWS.

--
TTFN,
patrick

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