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Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Boing Boing Corrects Amazon Math

Yesterday's post about Bob Dylan's new album "Modern Times" contained an important error about the track-listing on the Deluxe CD version of the disc -- the Amazon listing for this disc erroneously listed it as a 14-track CD, while it is actually a 10-track disc with bonus videos on an accompanying DVD.
-- Boing Boing: Error in yesterday's Bob Dylan/iTunes post

This being the post where Cory ranted against the machine about not being able to burn iTunes video tracks to audio CD. He was accusing Apple of forcing four tracks to be in the "unrippable" video format, unlike the CD. Of course, I didn't need the Amazon link (which when I read the post was completely accurate) to know that Cory was off .. I just paid attention to the music video titles from iTunes. Five minutes of research later, I realized he was complaining about nothing.

What is it with major blogs not willing to do even five minutes of common sense fact checking? To date, Cory has said the PlayStation 3 would not support Blu-Ray (false), that HDMI support cost $100 in the PlayStation 3 (false) and that Apple was forcing users to play tracks off of Modern Times via video (false). Let's toss in that meme that just everyone was spreading about the PlayStation 3 not being able to play rental titles (false and physically impossible).

As a geek, I'm pretty used to people getting technical facts slightly wrong. I'm sure I've done it in the past. Some of this stuff gets pretty specific. But not any of the above. And if you make serious coin of your blog, can't you afford ten minutes here or there to check your facts? Not to mention if you get the kind of traffic Boing Boing gets ... don't you have some kind of obligation to the reader to do so? Several blogs repeated Cory's meme about iTunes and Bob Dylan ... will they understand how much the errata contradicts his argument?

Personally, I don't see where the blogosphere gets to rail against the mainstream media if misinformation is going to be a mainstay.




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