What are you talking about? The quote you included in your first response appears nowhere in the EFF piece Boing Boing links to. It appears in the secondary piece that I referenced, but I’ve already said that you only get the correct impression if you follow that link: there was thus no need for me to include the part you’re claiming I excluded in bad faith, because the part I quoted already establishes there were only 17,000 numbers in total that were being queried. I never said the piece BB links to is incorrect—I just said it’s misleading—and I don’t think I made a mistake when I said it was misleading (though if people want to comment saying they understood the document BB quotes as meaning that only 17,000 numbers were ever queried, then I’ll freely admit the text isn’t misleading).
How is providing mathematical analysis confusing? The EFF called out the WSJ for providing a figure, and then provided a non-commensurable number in response. How does that help people? I have converted that into a percentage figure that can be directly compared with what the WSJ said. Does it matter that the 17,000 figure has been confirmed by a court? If I claim that I’ll only spend $0.05% of my income on something and a court finds I’ll actually spend $20 on it, does that really clarify anything? Or do you need to perform some analysis?
