Thursday, September 18, 2008

Remember GIGO?

Garbage In, Garbage Out. If you input nonsense the program outputs nonsense. It's not rocket science.
I just wrote a post for another blog Energy Crisis? Rubbish!. I had a few references, found a few more on Google, which I trusted. Why? I read them, carefully. There's a risk of GIGO, but pretty small if I was paying attention.

If you read carefully, 9 times out of 10, you'll spot the flaky stuff. A Wikipedia article had a word tagged "weasel word". Excellent. If the warning light goes on when you read something, ask yourself why.

Careful, discriminating readers will be hard work for the crooks & con-artists. The plethora of fantastic new communication tools (& toys) makes it that much easier for the good - & bad - to say something. And that means that taking care is even more important.

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