“Boilerplate was a mechanical man developed by Professor Archibald Campion during the 1880s and unveiled at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.” A remarkably convincing fake website by Paul Guinan. —Boilerplate: Mechanical Marvel of the Nineteenth Century Similar:The Circle (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 2) Kira relocates to Bariel's monast…Rewatching ST:DS9 Picking up where s2…CultureYes,…
: I have no idea how useful this article really is — it’s a classic case of “I found it on the Internet.” (A few posters have evaluated this article on MetaFilter.) —“Real” Deal about Nuclear, Bio, and Chem Attacks Similar:Thine Own Self (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 16) Data gets amnesia at a…
What’s up with public high school students? “They’ve had careful self-esteem training since they were 2. They’re told exactly what to feel about everything and they have to be happy all the time,” says researcher Elinor Burkett. —School Daze in America (Wash Times) Similar:Is Google Making Us Stupid?Nicholas Carr, in The Atlantic: As the …BooksWhy…
The Disney Channel airs a cartoon that comments on file-swapping software. An insightful real-world teenage morality tale, or corporate brainwashing? —Disney’s Peer-to-Peer Pressure (Wired) Similar:Pop song lyrics use more negative words ("hate", "sorrow") than 50 years agoThe use of words related to negative emo…EmpathyWe'll Always Have Paris (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 24)Rewatching Star Trek:…
“Who says we aren’t a nation of readers? Shucks. Before you can use a new electric skillet, you’re supposed to read its 12-page manual.” Marti Attoun —My On-and-off Struggle with Instruction Manuals (CS Monitor) Similar:What My Classroom Looks Like During Today's Video Journalism Workshop Within one minute of being placed in…AcademiaGiving Obsolete Books an Afterlife…
“MS Word has no right to be a standard for document preparation, since it’s clearly less efficient (for most purposes) than readily available alternatives,” fumes Allin Cottrell. —Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient If the alternative involves typing commands like “c:\gs\gsview\epstool -b -c -o%1.tmp.eps %1.eps”, is it easier to sell your soul to Microsoft? (See: “Using…
Many of the links on this site are broken, but the message pretty much keeps me going. Comments? “Students need the wonder, awe, and delight which comes from the adventure of confronting the unknown, unfettered by knowledge and common sense. Then learning is wonderful, awesome, and, delightful.” —Nothing Matters Similar:My J-Term course on August Wilson doesn’t…
“It’s like these sci-fi nerds can’t handle the real world, so they hide in a fake one,” says sports fanatic Scott Moreland, whose online fantasy-football team, DaJerseyJintz, was 4-1 at press time. —Walking Sports Database Scorns Walking Sci-Fi Databasesatire from The Onion) Similar:Alice in Quantumland: A Charming Illustrated Allegory of Quantum Mechanics by a CERN…
E-mail messages, voice-mail recordings and other electronic traces of people were routinely preserved by computer networks or telephone companies… These e-relics often captured a moment in time that is both beautiful and chilling to the people who discovered them. Ariana Eunjung Cha —Salvaging Electronic Last Words (WashPost) Similar:In September, 2000, I was blogging about PICK…
“New research reveals that 40 percent of Web surfers will visit a news or information site more often if its pages load faster.” Excuse me, but… duh! I guess you should ignore the August 2000 press release in which Jupiter advocated these “expensive enhancements.” —Fast And Efficient Web Sites Will Drive Greater Customer Retention Than…
Microsoft a monopoly? Pshaw. “Microsoft sees themselves as a small fish in a big pond. The pond is all information that could potentially be digitized in the universe. Just some insight into where they’re coming from.” Zimran Ahmed —Belly of the Beast Revisited (winterspeak.com) Similar:50 Years Ago: The World in 1961 – Alan Taylor -…
The anthrax scare will likely encourage greater use of e-mail. “If you’re connected to the Internet—and, duh, you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t—probably your e-mail-to-snail-mail ratio overwhelmingly favors the former.” Steven Levy —The End of Snail Mail? (MSNBC.com) Similar:In February, 2001, I was blogging about computer nostalgia, Napster, a horror typing game,…In February,…
“Traditionally, each company has had to design and implement all of the services it wanted to offer its website users. This approach leads to incredible waste, unprofitable websites, and lowered usability…” [Jakob Nielsen is talking about e-commerce, not personal home pages.] —The End of Homemade Websites (UseIT.com) Similar:Should your grieving mum see your digital secrets?A…
(satire from The Onion) “Have a long history of experience in the field you’re applying for and glowing recommendations. Either that, or print your résumé on really nice, heavyweight ivory paper.” —Job-Hunting Tips Similar:Rivals (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 11) A charming entrepreneur opens a casi… Rewatching ST:DS9 A man in a fanc…AmusingAn afternoon…
“The Apostrophe Protection Society was started in 2001 by John Richards, now its Chairman, with the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English language.” —The Apostrophe Protection Society Similar:A slave who works in a junk shop naturally builds a…
There’s way too much information online. What really matters to readers is quality, not quantity. Gerry McGovern —The Need for Editors on the Web Similar:All the 'Happy Birthday' song copyright claims are invalid, federal judge rules In a stunning reversal of decades of c…Business"A Story Before Bed" Publisher Seems to be Scraping and Republishing My…
Metadata “collects critical information such as heading, summary, author name, date of publication, classification, keywords, etc…. Without metadata a document is left floating in a cyberspace filled with 550 billion other documents. The chances of it being found by the right person at the right time are greatly diminished.” Gerry McGovern —Why Metadata is Important…
“Coming very near the bottom of an official list of religions put out by the [U.K.] Statistics Office, Jedi Knight is known by the code 896. Heathen comes in at 897. Followed by Atheist at 898 and lastly None with 899.” Kieren McCarthy —Jedi Knights Achieve [Sort of] Official Recognition as Religion (The Register) Similar:Behind…
“[T]he Internet story has come to an end.” Reuters —Silicon Alley Reporter Magazine Closes (Wired) Similar:Facebook shrinks fake news after warnings backfireIn its efforts to combat the spread of f…BusinessAfter Halloween where do all the pumpkins go? Now we knowIn the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jonathan…AmusingIan Bogost Has Won a HuffPo Badge for his Anti-Gamification Comment on…
“a cybernetic process whereby people in power deepen their dominance by using online communication to negotiate for the consent of the subjugated.” Mike Dorsher —Hegemony Online (UWEC) Similar:At the Johnstown Flood Museum. (May 31 1889 the neglected dam at the South Fork Fishing an…At the Johnstown Flood Museum. (May 31 1…CultureTime article with clickbaity headline:…