Follow-up to Differently Moral-ed Generation

Last Sunday I posted comments on an article that I mis-read as being written by Ian Jukes rather than by its actual author David Pogue. Ian's clarified his posting here and here. There has been some suggestion in the blogosphere that Ian purposely mislead his his readers into thinking the Pogue article was his own. That's horse feathers.

I've know Mr. Jukes for over 10 years and have never know him to be less than scrupulously honest (as well as good hearted and generous), Tasteless to be sure, but an honorable guy. In his original posting, Ian linked to Pogue's article before commenting and quoting from it in his own blog entry. I am guessing even the dimmest 7th grader knows that if you are trying to pass someone else's work off as your own, you don't include a link to the original source. Duh!

Remember Hanlon's Razor? ... Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Or in Ian's case, carelessness. 

Something perhaps we all could do a better job of remembering this holiday season. I know I sometimes need the benefit of the doubt myself.

And in the holiday spirit, I want to say thanks to Stephen Downes for actually answering my question regarding economic models that do reward the creator but do not depend on DRM techniques. Good food for thought here.

 

Comments

[Tim]

The way ideas get posted and cross-posted all over the web, it's not hard to make a mistake on the starting point. The best anyone can do is what you and Ian did: apologize, correct, and move on.

This is the first I've heard of Hanlon's Razor. The concept could certainly apply to much of government policy and politics in the US.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Tim,

Thanks.

When I started writing this, I remembered the saying, but not its author. Googled it and Hanlon's Razor popped up as a Wikipedia entry. Interesting history. Hanlon may be a misspelling of Heinlein. I think of the expression often - gives one a less paranoid view of the world.

All the best and happy new year,

Doug