Newspapers exist to gather eyeballs for advertisers. The absurdity and self-promotion of this inventor¹ served the purpose of attracting attention and buzz¹, which seems to have been the point all along from the newspaper¹s point of view. Anyone being interviewed by the press should keep this in mind and try to find out pretty quickly what the reporter¹s desired spin¹ is on a story is, and plan your response or rebuttal to his position accordingly. On 2/22/12 8:18 AM, "Thomas Haigh" <thaigh@computer.org> wrote:
Anyway, it does make me sad about the gap between all the great historical work that has been done by our community and the complete lack of use made of it by the media in this case. Despite a mass of criticism on the comments thread and presumably in emails from readers the Washington Post has done no more that append it¹s its defensive and absurd ³clarification.²