I’ve spoken now with both the author of the Wired article and Jim Jannard and I’m convinced the technical errors in the article are simply a matter of someone outside the industry trying to understand some complexities that not many inside our industry totally understand.
That, combined with a separate fact checker unfamiliar with our industry and an editor who had to reduce the length of the article, resulted in a large game of “telephone.” (For those not familiar with this old children’s game, everyone sits around in a circle and someone whispers a sentence
I was really wound up by the errors in the article, but after talking to all concerned and having written some articles myself I can see how this is not only possible, but probably hard to avoid.
The author has asked me to send him a list of technical corrections, so I’m working on that now. If anyone has any they want to add, post them in comments or email them and I can include them with my list. Or email the author directly–his web site is at http://michaelbehar.com/.