Cyberdouchery of Kasperskian Proportions
2011-07-21
James Arlen
So... I'm minding my own business this morning, reading Teh Titters… and I come across a retweet from my friend and all around mensch @jessehirsch. He'd retweeted someone pointing to the Scientific American article from yesterday in which the otherwise acceptable Evgeny Kaspersky of Kaspersky Labs was quoted from an interview in Spiegel
SPIEGEL: What kind of damage can a super virus like this inflict?
Kaspersky: Do you remember the total power outage in large parts of North America in August 2003? Today, I'm pretty sure that a virus triggered that catastrophe. And that was eight years ago.
Think about these points:
- What the heck is Scientific American doing here? I can tell that they are pushing the article by David Nicol but this is more than just a little sensationalism.
- Mr. Kaspersky - where is your brain? You don't know, you weren't there, you have effectively ZERO understanding of large scale grid operations in North America. Heck, I'd challenge you to find me a virus that runs on TruCluster and when there are thousands of pages of facts available, your opinion, however well formed, doesn't mean shit.
- The power of the re-tweet Jesse is one of the few journalists working today - and in a private conversation after I went all snotty on him on twitter, he pointed out that he cannot fact-check everything he tweets. This is a damn good point. And I apologized. The difference between "forwarding-ism" and "journal-ism" is fine, delicate, and completely frakked up in today's press-wires are news world.
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