bug in the Sunday Times

"Microsoft's Jumbo Patch" - an article published in the Sunday Times yesterday (3rd oct) reported that Microsoft was releasing its windows XP update patch, Service Pack 2 (SP2) by the end of this month. [quote from the paper -"By the end of this month, Microsoft will have offered this 70MB to 270MB download to anyone who turns on the Windows feature called Automatic Updates in the Start menu. You can also download SP2 or order a free CD by mail at www.microsoft.com"] the SP2, in fact, has been released long ago since August!

well, it's not exactly fair to just blame ST as the article was taken from the New York Times. but the article in the NYT was published since thursday, 23 September. though the SP2 were to be released by the end of september, the readers of ST would just have the notion that it would be released by the end of this month since the article was just published in ST yesterday.

i know it's not a big deal. but it just poses me with a question of the qualification and the attitude of the journalist.

firstly, if you're a writer of technology news, you should be very well-informed in this area. and the launch of the Sp2 was something really big in the internet for the past 2 months.

secondly, if you are to take an article from somewhere else, it should be published within a period of time that the article is still applicable (ie. by September). otherwise, you could just rewrite it in your own word. not just blindly do the cut and paste operations.

thirdly, the original article had a mistake. and a correction of it was published the next day (24 september) in NYT. but the one-over-week-later article in ST was not corrected as it should.

A newspaper is something that the mass relies on, the Strait Time especially. thus, the integrity of the news should come first. but this article has proved otherwise. this piece of news shows a slipshod attitude of the writer. i'm somewhat disappointed as ST is a major newspaper here and this kind of thing shouldn't be let happenning.


Ni submitted homework at 11:05 AM

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