Olive is software to put facsimiles of the newspaper print editions on line. By clicking on an article, a reader can see a more screen friendly copy of an article. Both the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune have Olive editions. I subscribe to both, partly to get the comics rather than the text of some of the articles.
But for years the Olive edition has had a major flaw; a flaw that still exists in the current version rolled out last year. I don't know where they get o• writing about people like Je•rey.
The Olive edition of the 2017-04-17 Duluth News Tribune converted a USA Today article about North Korea to:
"The secretive state also showed o• a submarine-launched missile that it successfully fired last year.
"Analysts said that the weapons on display raised new questions about North Korea’s capacities going forward. Je•rey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., called the show 'a bewildering array of new missile-related hardware.'"
I did change the quote marks to match the standard for quoting material that includes quotes.
Given all the product recalls, the unfriendly skies of the airlines, and much more, I would say the only efficiency in far too many corporations is move as much revenue as possible to the CEOs and board members. Gosh, I wish I could get $250,000 or more for showing up for six board meetings a year. And many of these people, including the CEO's are on the boards of several companies.
Showing posts with label typos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label typos. Show all posts
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Corporate slip-up
David McGrath wrote a local view, “A few ‘no thanks' are in order today".
I sent him a note of thanks, but when I sent it, I realized that the address was wrong. The first four characters of his address were not included. In the Olive Edition of the DNT the email address was split. (Olive is software that displays the printed edition as is and then will open up single articles. It has many of its own problems.)
I thought it might be that the opinion editor was being careless. That would be ironic because he always seems to find something to change in almost all of my letters or commentaries. So much so that I have given up sending anything to the DNT.
I looked at the DNT on my iPad this morning, but I am using my MacBook Air to write this blog entry. The Olive Edition opens with an error on this computer, and nobody has fixed the problem yet. So, I looked at the web edition, and surprise! The email address is correct at the bottom of the article.
That means that the opinion editor probably never saw the result once it left his computer to the automated process to be put in all the various formats.
And probably nobody double checks all of these errors because the owners won’t provide enough resources to check and correct all of these irritating errors.
I sent him a note of thanks, but when I sent it, I realized that the address was wrong. The first four characters of his address were not included. In the Olive Edition of the DNT the email address was split. (Olive is software that displays the printed edition as is and then will open up single articles. It has many of its own problems.)
I thought it might be that the opinion editor was being careless. That would be ironic because he always seems to find something to change in almost all of my letters or commentaries. So much so that I have given up sending anything to the DNT.
I looked at the DNT on my iPad this morning, but I am using my MacBook Air to write this blog entry. The Olive Edition opens with an error on this computer, and nobody has fixed the problem yet. So, I looked at the web edition, and surprise! The email address is correct at the bottom of the article.
That means that the opinion editor probably never saw the result once it left his computer to the automated process to be put in all the various formats.
And probably nobody double checks all of these errors because the owners won’t provide enough resources to check and correct all of these irritating errors.
Sunday, May 04, 2014
I am an Olive grinch
How readable do you think the following is?
Yet some parameters endure. Phi losopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Not precisely, perhaps, but human history, both personally and collec tively, is definitely thematic. And you didn’t record it, you either won’ recall it, or your memory of it will faulty. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote, “The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree the primeval forest which fell with out being heard.” Perhaps that’s why launched the log — it made me seem more real. Or maybe the record is akin to scratches on the wall of a prisoner’ cell, tallying the days until release.
What kind of editor would let this text see print, what with dropped letters/punctuation and split words? Other examples have bold subtitles moved into the text and many other distracting errors.
This is an example of “To err is human; to really screw up it takes a computer”. The above is from “The snares and lairs of memory” by Peter M. Leschack in the Star Tribune, 4 May 2014, as displayed when expanding an article from the facsimile page of the Olive edition.
The actual printed text is:
Yet some parameters endure. Philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Not precisely, perhaps, but human history, both personally and collectively, is definitely thematic. And if you didn’t record it, you either won’t recall it, or your memory of it will be faulty. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote, “The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.” Perhaps that’s why I launched the log — it made me seem more real. Or maybe the record is akin to scratches on the wall of a prisoner’s cell, tallying the days until release.
The human editor didn’t make any mistakes, but the computer editor really screwed up. This happens all the time in the Olive edition of both the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune. The Olive edition displays a facsimile of the printed newspaper. You can easily “flip” the pages or jump to a section. You can click on an article to expand it.
The expanded view has the advantage of bringing together segments printed on different pages and of having larger text. But all the “translation” errors are distracting. Did the author really write that? Why is that unrelated bold text doing in this section? And on and on.
This computer-induced garble is present in both the iPad and the laptop/desktop versions of the software.
Isn’t this a wonderful example of “business efficiency”?
Oh, well! It still beats going to the corner with the right change in all kinds of weather or calling up to cancel when we’re out of town. And I can easily make clippings of things on which I want to base another one of these whining entries.
Yet some parameters endure. Phi losopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Not precisely, perhaps, but human history, both personally and collec tively, is definitely thematic. And you didn’t record it, you either won’ recall it, or your memory of it will faulty. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote, “The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree the primeval forest which fell with out being heard.” Perhaps that’s why launched the log — it made me seem more real. Or maybe the record is akin to scratches on the wall of a prisoner’ cell, tallying the days until release.
What kind of editor would let this text see print, what with dropped letters/punctuation and split words? Other examples have bold subtitles moved into the text and many other distracting errors.
This is an example of “To err is human; to really screw up it takes a computer”. The above is from “The snares and lairs of memory” by Peter M. Leschack in the Star Tribune, 4 May 2014, as displayed when expanding an article from the facsimile page of the Olive edition.
The actual printed text is:
Yet some parameters endure. Philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Not precisely, perhaps, but human history, both personally and collectively, is definitely thematic. And if you didn’t record it, you either won’t recall it, or your memory of it will be faulty. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote, “The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.” Perhaps that’s why I launched the log — it made me seem more real. Or maybe the record is akin to scratches on the wall of a prisoner’s cell, tallying the days until release.
The human editor didn’t make any mistakes, but the computer editor really screwed up. This happens all the time in the Olive edition of both the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune. The Olive edition displays a facsimile of the printed newspaper. You can easily “flip” the pages or jump to a section. You can click on an article to expand it.
The expanded view has the advantage of bringing together segments printed on different pages and of having larger text. But all the “translation” errors are distracting. Did the author really write that? Why is that unrelated bold text doing in this section? And on and on.
This computer-induced garble is present in both the iPad and the laptop/desktop versions of the software.
Isn’t this a wonderful example of “business efficiency”?
Oh, well! It still beats going to the corner with the right change in all kinds of weather or calling up to cancel when we’re out of town. And I can easily make clippings of things on which I want to base another one of these whining entries.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Beware the pitfalls of automatic spell checking
Automatic spell checking can be a very helpful tool, or it can be a very embarrassing tool.
Twice in the last week I have posted blog entries that had some glaring errors. The errors were words that I am sure I didn't type. Whatever I did type was changed by the spell checker in
Apple's TextEdit, my writing program of choice. My wife pointed out two of these as errors, after I posted them, of course. One I just found out about, she had left a message on my cell phone on Tuesday. Another assumption, nobody calls my cell phone.
Two lessons here.
Proofread everything you write, and then proofread it again, and then have somebody else proofread it. And even then something can escape everybody's notice. I've read well-written books by famous authors with glowing acknowledgements for all the people who helped including reading drafts, and still the books have had glaring errors:(
Always check your cellphone for messages. Being buried in pocket or purse can muffle the ring tone, especially if you set it at low.
Twice in the last week I have posted blog entries that had some glaring errors. The errors were words that I am sure I didn't type. Whatever I did type was changed by the spell checker in
Apple's TextEdit, my writing program of choice. My wife pointed out two of these as errors, after I posted them, of course. One I just found out about, she had left a message on my cell phone on Tuesday. Another assumption, nobody calls my cell phone.
Two lessons here.
Proofread everything you write, and then proofread it again, and then have somebody else proofread it. And even then something can escape everybody's notice. I've read well-written books by famous authors with glowing acknowledgements for all the people who helped including reading drafts, and still the books have had glaring errors:(
Always check your cellphone for messages. Being buried in pocket or purse can muffle the ring tone, especially if you set it at low.
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