The Internet? BAH!

I found this fifteen year old article by chance! It makes for interesting reading as at that time the Dot-Com bubble was in the future, social media did not exist and 128 character security was just a dream somewhere in South Africa.

Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana

by Clifford StollFebruary 27, 1995

After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

For the rest of the article, do the standard “Click Here” thang!

Travelling

A number of the Archival Readers have been travelling of late.

It is probable that some of them soon will make that important journey from China to Japan, an enterprise which is necessary to reduce some of the political tensions in that part of the world.

Today, here is your mission.

To follow the Google Maps route from “China” to “Japan”, paying strict attention to step 42!

Oh, you’ll have to do it on your computer 🙂

A bit of Intertubz silliness

This may take a while to load.

And I needed to double-click on the image to make it go.

Social Networking Map

This is one of those images you MUST click to get the full story.

Burgled from Flowtown

Five Ways Around Conroy’s Filter

The Australian Government is threatening Australia with an ISP-based filter.

Censorship. The thin edge of the wedge.

Spending big bucks, around 130 million of them on something which will not work.

Here are five very simple ways around this travesty of democracy.

Thanks, Cybe.

Homophonophobic

Ok, we all know just how good the Spell-Check Gods can be.

Just don’t trust them. They are as deceptive as that old Serpent in the Garden of Eden.

They also encourage that slothful laziness which leads to words loosing there plaice.

I read a lot of posts. I also read the comments.

Some of them become almost unreedable. Their are sew many homophones a sentence can lose it’s weigh on the trip to teh readers’ brain.

It is one thing to rely on and blame Spell Check but that incorrect homophone has to be typed before it is accepted as correct. If you, as the writer of a post or a comment, make silly errors in this matter then Spell Check is of no use and you forfeit your right to be taken seriously.

Sometimes we readers get totally fed up. Those mistakes eventually lead to major Tourette’s outbursts.

As I found  hear here at Learn Your Damn Homophones

1996

I’m Guilty As Well

xkcd, of course

Emoticons for the Advanced Writer

Have you ever been overcome with an emotion but unable to find the right emoticon to express yourself?

It is a problem from which I often suffer. 😦

Here is a list of essential emoticons for everyday use.

*:0 = “MY FACE IS ON FIRE!!!!”

!,! = “Hi. I am a rabbit”

% = “I feel like I am a mosquito looking directly at you.”

|:( = “I am displeased with my unibrow.”

<:( = “Pointy hats make me sad.”

😡 = “Now my hat is upside-down and I don’t feel any better about it.”

(::::) = “I feel like I am the underside of a pregnant dog.”

:0& = “I LOVE PRETZELS!!!! NOM! NOM! NOM!”

:*( = “You make me cry sparkly tears.”

{:| = “I am a Frenchman.”

Q:| = “I’m Davy Crockett.”

:$ = “I am trying to look unimpressed, but someone drew a squiggly mouth over my real mouth and this must be terribly confusing for you. I am sorry.”

So, that will get you through most of today.

When will someone invent a range of eroticons to help in those barely whispered about cyberspace encounters?

Today’s final emoticon is

.

Which indicates that my world is imploding!

Received via email but Burgled from hyperboleandahalf.  ( I guess that makes me a fence)

What Is Electricity?

We know from our junior high-school science training that electricity is actually a fast-moving herd of electrons, which are tiny one-celled animals that can survive in almost any environment except inside a double-A battery where they die in minutes.

Electrons are formed when clouds rub together and become excited. This was proved in the famous experiment wherein Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm and was almost killed.

Nevertheless, Franklin proved an important scientific point, which is that electricity originates inside clouds. There, it forms into lightning, which is attracted to earth by golfers.

After entering the ground, the electricity hardens into coal, which, when dug up by power companies and burned in big ovens called generators, turns back into electricity, which is sent in the form of volts (also known as watts, or r.p.m. for short) through special wires with birds sitting on them to consumer’s homes, where it is transformed by TV sets into commercials for beer, which passes through the consumers and back into the ground, thus completing what is known as a circuit.

Warning

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #10: An ISP filter is the best option out there.

Calls to provide parents with tools to control their children’s access to the internet are well founded and practical. An optional, computer level filter would be far more efficient and cost effective without handing over unnecessary power to a government body. And this is the plan that Australians actually want. GetUp’s Galaxy phone poll found that 86% of Australians think that parents, not the Government or Internet Service Providers, should have the primary responsibility for protecting children online.

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

There are the ten big lies which our Government are telling us.Of course it will not help to simply cast your vote for the Conservatives. They would not dare to alienate the “Church Vote” by dropping the filter.

“It will only filter “RC” content.” But watch how quickly a filter will quickly remove sites about “Bypassing the AU Internet Filter”.

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #9: The filter would be impenetrable.

No matter how smart filtering technology may be, there is always someone smarter. The current model of filter has already been cracked. In fact, there’s a good chance your children can show you how. What’s more, organisations around the world are already developing ways to get around the filters of oppressive regimes. One that’s doing a particularly good job in helping Iranians get around their Government filter is Access Now (hyperlink:http://www.accessnow.org/), founded with the support of organisation’s like Avaaz.org, MoveOn and Australian organisation GetUp.org.au).

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

Top 10 Internet Filter Lies in Australia

Lie #8: If you’re anti mandatory filtering you’re pro child porn.

Conroy, through his argument in parliament and in the media, has constructed a universe where those who question mandatory filtering are, by extension, in support of child pornography. Surely he wouldn’t accuse people within his own party of being pro child porn. Would he?

from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.

Nortons, You Have Failed