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Re: Re: Help put a stop to incompetent computerforensics


From: "Jason Coombs" <jasonc () science org>
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 04:49:45 +0000 GMT

J.A. Terranson wrote:
SANS is a for profit corp.,
and was run as such even when
they were playing possum as a
non-profit.
They are *not* a "disinterested
third party" any more than the
anti-virus firms are - and not
many people would use *them*
as an authoritative reference

To drive this point home, Newton's Telecom 'Dictionary' has some amazingly bad 'definitions' -- for example, the 
definition of 'multimedia' includes data that is transmitted or viewed by way of a fax machine.

http://www.harrynewton.com/

Newton's 'definition' of 'Internet' starts out with a first-person narrative on how difficult it is to define the 
Internet. Pure crap.

Anyone who puts effort into writing a book should be encouraged to publish it, but publishers (and readers) should care 
a little about commercial misuse of labels like 'dictionary' when the definitions have only a single biased author.

There are some very impressive collaborative, community-developed computer dictionaries and encyclopedias. They do a 
nice job most of the time, because they are constantly peer-reviewed and corrected.

Anyone presumptuous enough to arbitrarily define technical terms without considerable careful thought and then publish 
the arbitrary text and call it a 'dictionary' should be shot.

Regards,

Jason Coombs
jasonc () science org
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