"A lot of people complain about the Firefox 'memory leak(s)'. All versions of Firefox no doubt leak memory - it is a common problem with software this complicated. We look to fix the issues where we can. David Baron and others have done a huge amount of excellent work in this area. What I think many people are talking about however with Firefox 1.5 is not really a memory leak at all. It is in fact a feature."
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Member since:2005-07-08
No, it's not entirely incorrect. Taken literally, his title is true. His blog post is about the so-called Firefox "memory leak".
But Thom's title, "Firefox Memory Leak a 'Feature'" is totally incorrect because the blog post says that it's a feature, NOT a memory leak, not that it is a memory leak AND it's a feature.
And so what if everyone does it? Does that automatically make it a good idea to do it?
Member since:2005-06-29
Give 'em a friggin' break and quit nitpicking.
The fact that everyone does it may or may not make it ok; but it means that you should take it into context when interpretting it: Sensational titles are expected. They're trying to get you excited, in some way, about the boredom that is ordinary life.
Truly sensationalist journalism is when the article following continues the bad pattern of just trying to get you excited and not informing you of true, accurate, unabated facts.
If Thom's title is interpretted with the given article as context: It says "Firefox Memory Leak a Feature." All he has to do to make that non sensationalist in any way is quote "Memory Leak."
Would you feel better if he quoted that? Or should he just put "Firefox Rocks, This Feature Concerning Cached Pages Is Not a Memory Leak: You See, Memory Leaks Occur When..." Or maybe he should go with "An Article Concerning A Supposed Memory Leak In Firefox."
See, the problem I think you're having here is that you're assuming titles are factual. They're not. They're catchy short things to stick in people's minds later that will help them remember the rest of the topic. They're eye catching. They're supposed to bring the reader in. They need to be short, of course.
They're an abstraction. A creative, catchy abstraction. And guess what, they're a _very_ lossy abstraction.
Member since:
2005-06-29
It's entirely incorrect in the same way OSNew's title is... Article titles are like this on every newspaper in the country, and so I don't know why you expect more from a meta news site.