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Comment AJAM was rubbish; long live AJE (Score 3, Informative) 276

by wilkinsm (#51298195) Attached to: Al Jazeera America Terminates All TV and Digital Operations

Living in the UK I get Al Jazeera English (AJE) over the air for free; frankly it's my preferred TV news source here (sorry BBC.)
However every time I'd travel to the US, all I could usually get there was Al Jazeera America (AJAM); which I found frankly rubbish. The programming was all different and appeared to me to have been clearly designed to not be too harsh or distant; I suspect in order to try and not frighten the squeamish/sheltered US audience too much. Obviously that did not work out so well for them.

I hope now they find a way to push AJE out to the US TV providers; while it has it's flaws, I think US residents could greatly benefit from their excellent international news and documentaries (I highly recommend their "Witness" series in particular.) Yeah it's funded by government of Qatar, but after years of watching I've only detected their influence on the editorial process a handful of times (In reality I'm guessing it's usually AJE self-censoring; news around the royal family specifically seems to be a sensitive area.) When in doubt, France 24 is usually a good double check.

Finally I'd just say that I find AJE's coverage of Africa news/events some of the best out there; I really hope that does not change.

Comment A few along the way (Score 1) 363

by grammar nazi (#38159620) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Science Sights To See?

In order east to west:
Corning museum of glass - great combo of science, history, and art (Corning ny)
Wright Patterson air force museum (outside Dayton oh)
OK city cowboy museum - another great combo of science, art, history - home of worlds largest barbed-wire collection
Kansas city WW1 museum- a highly interactive modern museum
Of course there are many more, but these are my favs
Social Networks

The Importance — and Limits — of Very Large Data Sets 17

Posted by Soulskill from the libraries-of-congress-per-fortnight dept.
New submitter kodiaktau writes "A recently presented paper discusses how large data sets can improve learning algorithms, but points out that researchers still need to account for bias and incompleteness before drawing conclusions. The paper also goes into the need for responsible business practices to manage these data sets. 'There's been the emergence of a philosophy that big data is all you need. We would suggest that, actually, numbers don't speak for themselves.' The full paper is available through SSRN. Of particular importance is their assertion that even huge data sets can and will be affected by filters or the analyst who is interpreting it. '[Study co-author Kate Crawford] notes that many big data sets — particularly social data — come from companies that have no obligation to support scientific inquiry. Getting access to the data might mean paying for it, or keeping the company happy by not performing certain types of studies.'"

Comment Very Strange (Score 1) 7

by wilkinsm (#15477545) Attached to: New York Courts AMD Fab
Someone in the marketing department blew it on this one - I think they would have done better to syndicate PRNewswire or a proper corporate blog or something.

Maybe real AMD employees will take over and post interesting technological bits like IBM does on their DeveloperWorks site. Now _that_ would be interesting reading...

Comment 2% ROI??? (Score 1) 226

by grammar nazi (#14656607) Attached to: Toshiba to Pay $5.4 Billion for Westinghouse
The market for Nuclear Power will increase 50% by 2020? 50% in 15 years is only about 2% return on investment. It's not a particularly lucrative investment for Toshiba unless westinghouse was very cheap or has much room to grow in market share of this nuclear industry.

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