mercredi 26 mars 2003

Watching our language Some of the hundreds of journalists who work for AFP are idiots. That's a subjective judgement of mine. Some of them may think the same of me and are welcome to do so! But none, going by measurable standards required and the qualifications needed to do the job, can be described as novices, though of course we have our share of trainees. Those who exercise responsibility have years of experience (and until I append a brief "about" page. Done, March 30). Thus, it's a very healthy thing that a week into the war -- and as the leaders of the two countries with troops pushing their way into Iraq meet at least in part to discuss what happens afterwards -- our main newsrooms still ring sometimes with debate about the words we use. The foundations for any peace cannot be built on uncertain sands of deceit and of lies. The "legality" of the campaign against Iraq is not my domain of expertise, though I am inclined to believe lawyers who say it is illegal rather than those who support it. That's a personal conviction, based on my non-expert reading of the arguments. But try "googling" -- as long as that word is allowed -- for the legal case for the war, and I wish you a better time of it than I had. I could little more than brief statements from attorneys-general. What equally worries we journalists are distortions which have already been flogged to death by bloggers but remain common currency in the media and can so easily slip through into the public consciousness. "Liberation" and "invasion" are not the same thing! "Terrorist" is a word which has been much debased since September 11, 2001. I must have subbed scores of stories about African leaders keen to win friends in Washington who use it to describe their opponents. One of the latest to do so, in recent months, is President Charles Taylor of Liberia. His opponents level the same charge at him. "Coalition" is another high-risk word. Though Washington can legitimately lay claim to less active support from other parties, since when have two main active elements formed a coalition? Some news organisations are proving better than others at how they handle stories from "embedded" journalists. We all need to remember to say that reports are subject to restrictions whether they come from Baghdad or from behind the lines of the US and British troops. Two other words sometimes get forgotten in the heat of the coverage: "suspected" and "alleged". Until such time as journalists are provided with hard evidence of what Saddam has in his arsenal -- and heaven forbid that any proof should come in the form of their use! -- the Iraqi leader possesses "alleged weapons of mass destruction". That's all we know for now. zzz I was hoping one little AFP story today would make it into the Yahoo Asia pick-up of our newswire, then I'd have no qualms about linking to it in full. But since it was reported by a good friend currently in Qatar and subbed by an old hand in the region, nobody will kill me for giving the gist of Brigadier General Vincent Brooks's exasperation at the US forward command centre. Brooks spoke out against Iraqi soldiers' "disregard for laws of armed conflict" and said that in donning US uniforms, their behaviour was "akin ... to the behaviour of global terrorists". His words, including that one, again. Yes. It's not fair play. But as a colleague remarked, such tactics helped the Americans win a war of independence. I have no problem whatever with regarding Saddam as a "murderous dictator". It just stuns me to hear people say they really expected all this to be over inside a week. There's a long way to go before reconstruction is more than an important item on the agenda. 9:46:42 PM  link   your views? [] TechSurvivors (2) - maintenance Home late from work and with a pile of papers to sort out, it was time to let the computer run a weekly check for updates to Mac and third-party software and then to deal with the major, monthly maintenance routines. The latter I completed this morning while catching up on the radio news as I shaved, bathed and all that. The old pleasure in watching complicated tools do their job has long since palled... With four partitions on my Mac, the monthly programme takes about three hours to do properly, but it's vital. In past months, I've been out on call four times to help people who ran into big problems because of trouble which could have been prevented. It's just that nobody told them how, least of all Apple. For the software updates, I'm paid up into the Pro system of Version Tracker (which also works for Windows), since this offers a desktop tool which checks what's on your machine and then compares your applications with what they have on their servers. With time, you learn that you don't always need the latest version. Read the fine print...! :) It costs, it's imperfect because it sometimes tells you, for technical reasons, that you don't have the latest version when you do - this particularly seems to apply to items you may have added to your "preference panes" in OS X. But it's a useful time-saver. At that Mac help site of ours in my links, TechSurvivors, the regulars consider prevention every bit as important as cure. Everybody has their own daily, weekly, monthly and six-monthly maintenance routines, often discussed and compared. Over the years, I've learned the hard way what can go wrong if you don't bother with them. Several friends have turned to Macs in the past couple of years. I can scarcely recommend strongly enough that they visit TS and one or two other sites to check out how to keep their machines running like a Rolls. Since much of this was thrashed out a while back, a search in the archives is likely to turn up what you need, if there's nothing in the current forum. Apple's own Disk Utility is a far from adequate tool. Use the TS search function, punch in words like, well, "maintenance", "routines" and even ... "chores". "Disk utilities" is another good bet. If you can't find what you want, don't hesitate to register and pop the question. The community ranges from newbies to people who can help you out with the arcane language of the "terminal" and the Unix underpinnings of OS X. A friendly and quick response is guaranteed. And a TS maxim is that "no question is a stupid one". Similar fora, which have in recent years also emerged here in France, exist in the Windows world. While I contribute to TS far less than I have done in the past, I owe much of what I now know about Macs to the people there. I found the discussion board medium a little scary at first, which is why I know that many hesitate to take the plunge. But when you do, you won't regret it. The time you can save is considerable, rather than ploughing through the manuals, though a passing acquaintance with even those is no bad thing. zzz For other issues, there are any number of useful portals to hundreds of sites. Ultimate Mac hasn't been updated for three years, but remains high in my bookmarks. French friends who've told me they'd like to see something similar simply needed introducing to the one-man show produced by Yves Cornil. When it comes to OS X, Richard Wourms gets less online credit than he deserves for 'OS X facile'. In English, there's a cornucopia offered by Savage Transcendental. 11:25:58 AM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.