No Nice News?

[windhound]

apologies for the size of the image, if it was smaller it makes it harder to read, which is the point of this thread ^_^
edit:  the forum ate part of the image..  hum..  well, to see the rest just click http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tspfeiff/nonicenews.png

anyways, it seems like everytime I open the BBC news RSS or Google News, or pretty much every other news source its all been rather negative, depressing stuff
violent beatings, massive flooding, slow aid to said flooding, victims of said flood shooting at their rescuers and stealing government vehicals and supplies, then pictures of earthquakes, more people die in iraq 'cause extremeists like to blow themselves up (you'd think they'd run out of suicide bombers after a while wouldnt you?  I mean, they're a one-time-use commodity..), more about the bird flu epidemic, people protesting..

about 3/4 of all news, atleast today, seems to be very negative.. 

on a brighter side, intel is working on their dual-core server chip, the millionaire who decided on a space vacation has returned safely, and "Britney's Bra: Not for Sale" (<- could be negitive if you were planning on buying said bra)

but really, the majority of the top news stories are about death and destruction
is this what people want to hear, what the media wants us to hear, or just what people feel is the most important thing going on?

[Kilkenne]

News that isn't so nice is what people pay money to read apparently...(Although online sources are free, they need to be parallel to the print sources and TV sources that they correspond with.)

I blame having a liberal media.  :-D

[Abby The Rat]

Ouu.. I see someone using Linux, Redhat... bleh

[windhound]

Fedora actually, 'cause its free
Fedora is basically a free testing ground for Redhat, if a feature works well in Fedora they'll put it in their commercial package for buisnesses
Windoze XP doesnt hold up well on large networks from what I've seen..  it just doesnt.  All the personal windows machines that I've seen slow down to the point of uselessness after about 4 months.  I dont know why..  my roommate's computer has no spyware, no adware, no viruses, few extra processes running, yet runs extremely slowly and unreliably, and thats pretty much the story for all machines on State's network..  the lab computers that run windows are all backed-up and restored regularly I believe...
much less trouble running linux..  its quick, hardy, virus free, dont really have to worry about it..

but yeah..  silly liberal media  :-P
the RSS just updated, with more horror stories of the earthquake and suicide bombing..

[Aqualis]

Our Windoze machine has now decided to reset itself every half-hour or so.

Umm... go bloggers. 8-)

[wolf bite]

Breaking News!

Man risks life to rescue cat from tree.
(no one would read the story)


Wolf Bite

[windhound]

thats resonably trivial though, although positive it only effects one person
it'd be like "The Johnsons's basement flooded, many boxs of pictures ruined"

I'm trying to think, but the majority of events that have a large effect on people /are/ negative
floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, mass murders, revolts, bombings...

the 'good news' are more category specific
the majority of people dont care about Pentium D processors. 
I dont give a piece of rat dung that Brad WhatsHisName married Julia MovieStar, but now two and a half months (76 days, 14 hours, 42 min, and 22 seconds) later they are getting a divorce

so I geuss thats the reasoning there, bad news effects everyone
good news is person specific
newspapers want to appeal to everyone, so the bad news gets priority, and whats to report of the other stuff gets shoved into small sections in the back.

[Gen. Volkov]

Mostly its about selling something. Bad news gets better ratings, more readers, etc., than good news, so that's what they give. Its all motivated by money.

[The Lady Shael]

Yep, exactly, the general public doesn't want to hear about an awesome new cure for a disease, or about a new president of a country who helped the poor people of the country...they'd much rather read about the gory details of mass genocide or the latest celebrity scandal. It takes something rather extreme for good news to outweigh the bad news. (like, 'Cure for cancer!', or something)

[Peace Alliance]

Breaking News
"Everything is gonna be alright"

.. i'd read that

[Gen. Volkov]

Me too. I like the Onion. They're funny.

[Abby The Rat]

While Running Linux may be free but it's not virus free and so on. And the biggest thing is, to be safe you need to know what to do otherwise your going to be a very nice hackers target.

That said, once you got the knowledge and swotted up Linux and how to protect yourself, then it can be a very hard thing to do, but so can windows.

[windhound]

*shrugs*
its like everything else
keep it up to date
keep your firewall up at all times

linux is adware free, spyware free, almost virus free
unless somone gets your root password, they cant really damage the system (all important files are protected, unlike windows)
in windows, if I wanted to, I could go in and delete the files that make the computer boot up, just with my regular user.  which is what makes it so easy for hackers

I did a bit of searching, and came up with this:
"There are about 60,000 viruses known for Windows, 40 or so for the Macintosh, about 5 for commercial Unix versions, and perhaps 40 for Linux. Most of the Windows viruses are not important, but many hundreds have caused widespread damage. Two or three of the Macintosh viruses were widespread enough to be of importance. None of the Unix or Linux viruses became widespread - most were confined to the laboratory."

[wolf bite]

A few weeks ago, an airplane leaving from LAX lost it mobility to use its front wheel. It turned around and, as the world watched, made a perfect emergency landing. Thus saving 144 lifes. Great news!

But then I feel the only reason it was so well covered was the reporter's hopes it would end up in a ball of flames on live TV.

I am thinking that the only good news that effects a lot of people is the escape from disaster. Unfortunately we rarely know what did not happen. So it can not be reported.

New flash:
"No earthquake hit New Mexico today!"


Wolf Bite