Why the internet will fail (from 1995)

Thanks go to Three Word Chant!

The Inter­net? Bah!

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

By Clif­ford Stoll | NEWSWEEK

From the maga­zine issue dated Feb 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.

Read more…

Geek Humor

• >——– The infor­ma­tion went data way ——–<
• 2 + 2 = 5 (for extre­mely large values of 2)
• AAAAA (Ame­ri­can Asso­cia­tion Against Acronym Abuse)
• (A)bort, ®etry, ℗retend this never happened…
• Access denied — nah nah na nah nah!
• An error? Impos­si­ble! My modem is error correcting.
• As a com­pu­ter, I find your faith in tech­no­logy amusing.
• ASCII stu­pid ques­tion, get a stu­pid ANCI.
• Bad com­mand. Bad, bad com­mand! Sit! Stay! Staaay…
• Bad com­mand or file name! Go stand in the corner.
• Best file com­pres­sion around: “DEL *.*” = 100% compression
• Beware of com­pu­ter pro­gram­mers that carry screw­dri­vers. (Leo­nard Brandwein)
• Beware of geeks bea­ring gifs.
• Bles­sed are the pes­si­mists, for they make backups!
• Bles­sed is the end-user who expects nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.
• The box said, “Requi­res Win­dows 98 or bet­ter” so I ins­ta­lled Linux.
• BREAKFAST.COM Halted…Cereal Port Not Res­pon­ding Read more…

10 things every geek should know

1. Every geek should be able to give the Vul­can “Live long and pros­per” hand sig­nal from Star Trek. (Check out this toy for geeky sports fans.)
2. A true geek must be able to carry on a con­ver­sa­tion using only Monty Python quo­tes.
3. To be a pro­per geek, one must know the ans­wer to the Ulti­mate Ques­tion.
4. In order to show that you are a Mas­ter Geek, you must be able to name the pri­mary cha­rac­ters of all five Star Trek series.
5. Like that geek hero, Ash, all geeks should know the three words you must recite in order to retrieve The Book of the Dead.
6. A geek must know how and when to imple­ment the Konami Code.
7. A smart geek should recog­nize WoW and OOo and be able to explain them to a non-geek.
8. A roman­tic geek can say “I love you” in binary.
9. A savvy geek knows at least one way to kill a Dalek.
10. Any life-loving geek has a sur­vi­val plan for a zom­bie apo­calypse and knows the best way to kill a zombie.

Use your remote from iTunes even while minimized

Makes your mul­ti­me­dia key­board but­tons work with iTu­nes when the pro­gram isn’t currently in focus, or is minimised.

It is com­mon to find that, when it’s not maxi­mi­sed, iTu­nes will not recog­nise your media or gaming key­board short­cuts as com­mands to play, pause, skip song, etc. This sim­ple plug-in fixes the pro­blem in most cases. It saves you having to bring iTu­nes up on screen each time you want to use the keys.

To use this plu­gin, simply copy the mmKeys.dll file into your plu­gins folder.

• For XP Users, this is found in “C:\Program Files\iTunes\Plug-ins”
• For Vista Users, it’s “C:\Users\your_username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iTunes Plug-ins” and you may have to show hid­den files (or use the search) in order to see the App­Data fol­der. One com­men­ter also repor­ted that it works when put in “C:\Users\your_username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iTunes Plug-ins”.
• For Win­dows 7 Users: follow Vista ins­truc­tions above.

You also need to res­tart iTu­nes to load the dll.

You can down­load the file here.

•   Mul­ti­me­dia Key­board DLL (44.0 KiB, 53 hits)

What happened with the Internet in 2009?

Pingdom.com has your answers.

How many web­si­tes were added? How many emails were sent? How many Inter­net users were there? This post will ans­wer all of those ques­tions and many more. Pre­pare for infor­ma­tion over­load, but in a good way.

We have used a wide variety of sour­ces from around the Web. A full list of source refe­ren­ces is avai­la­ble at the bot­tom of the post for those inte­res­ted. We here at Ping­dom also did some addi­tio­nal cal­cu­la­tions to get even more num­bers to show you.

A Few of the head­li­nes are:

Read the rest here.

http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/01/22/internet-2009-in-numbers/

Is your power supply compatible with NOSMOKE?

After expe­rien­cing dif­fi­cul­ties with his com­pu­ter, a poor, incog­ni­zant user called the sys­tem maker’s tech­ni­cal sup­port line for assistance…

Tech­ni­cian: Hello. How can I help you today?

Cus­to­mer: There’s smoke coming from the power supply on my computer…

Tech­ni­cian: Looks like you need a new power supply…

Cus­to­mer: No, I don’t! I just need to change the star­tup files…

Tech­ni­cian: Sir, what you desc­ri­bed is a faulty power supply. You need to replace it…

Cus­to­mer: No way! Someone told me that I just had to change the sys­tem star­tup files to fix the pro­blem! All I need is for you to tell me the right command…

For the next ten minu­tes, in spite of the technician’s efforts to explain the pro­blem and its solu­tion, the cus­to­mer ada­mantly insis­ted that he was right. So, in frus­tra­tion, the tech­ni­cian responded…

Tech­ni­cian: I’m sorry. We don’t nor­mally tell our cus­to­mers this, but there’s an undo­cu­men­ted DOS com­mand that will fix the problem…

Cus­to­mer: I knew it!

Tech­ni­cian: Just add the line ‘LOAD NOSMOKE.COM’ at the end of the CONFIG.SYS file and everything should work fine. Let me know how it goes…

About ten minu­tes later, the tech­ni­cian recei­ved a call back from the customer…

Cus­to­mer: It didn’t work. The power supply is still smoking…

Tech­ni­cian: Well, what ver­sion of DOS are you using?

Cus­to­mer: MS-DOS 6.22… Tech­ni­cian: Well, that’s your pro­blem. That ver­sion of DOS doesn’t inc­lude NOSMOKE. You’ll need to con­tact Mic­ro­soft and ask them for a patch. Let me know how it all works out…

When nearly an hour had pas­sed, the phone rang again…

Cus­to­mer: I need a new power supply…

Tech­ni­cian: How did you come to that conclusion?

Cus­to­mer: Well, I called Mic­ro­soft and told the tech­ni­cian what you said, and he star­ted asking me ques­tions about the make of the power supply…

Tech­ni­cian: What did he tell you?

Cus­to­mer: He said my power supply isn’t com­pa­ti­ble with NOSMOKE…

Comparing 1 GB of Storage

Side by side view of 1 GB 20 years ago and 1 GB today.

OS Airlines

• DOS Air­li­nes

Every­body pushes the air­plane until it gli­des, then jumps on and lets the plane coast until it hits the ground again, then push again, jump on again and so on.

• DOS with QEMM Airlines

The same thing but with more leg room to push.

• MAC Air­li­nes

All the ste­wards, ste­war­des­ses, cap­tains, bag­gage hand­lers and tic­ket agents look the same, act the same and talk the same. Every time you ask ques­tions about details, you are told you don’t need to know, don’t want to know, and everything will be done for you without you having to know, so just shut up.

• OS/2 Air­li­nes

To board the plane, you have your tic­ket stam­ped 10 dif­fe­rent times by stan­ding in 10 dif­fe­rent lines. Then you fill out a form sho­wing where you want to sit and whether it should look and feel like an ocean liner, a pas­sen­ger train, or a bus. If you suc­ceed in get­ting on board the plane and the plane suc­ceeds in get­ting off the ground, you have a won­der­ful trip .… except times when the rud­der and flaps get fro­zen in posi­tion, in which case you have time to say your pra­yers and get your­self pre­pa­red before the crash.

• WINDOWS Air­li­nes

The air­port ter­mi­nal is nice and colour­ful, with friendly ste­wards and ste­war­des­ses, easy access to the plane, and an une­vent­ful takeoff … then the plane blows up without war­ning whatsoever.

• NT Air­li­nes

Ever­yone marches out on the run­way, says the pass­word in uni­son and forms the out­line of a plane. Then they all sit down and make a whooshing sound like they’re flying.

• UNIX Air­li­nes

Ever­yone brings one piece of the plane with them when they come to the air­port. They all go out on the run­way and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing cons­tantly about what kind of plane they are building.

13 Things Every Net User Should Know

1. Bill Gates is not giving you $1000, and Dis­ney is not giving you a free vaca­tion, no one is giving away cases of free M & M’s, the GAP is not giving away clothing.

There is no baby food com­pany issuing class-action checks. MTV will not give you backs­tage pas­ses if you for­ward something to the most peo­ple. You can relax; there is no need to pass it on “just in case it’s true.” Further­more, just because someone said in the mes­sage, four gene­ra­tions back, that “we chec­ked it out and it’s legit,” does not actually make it true.

2. There is no kid­ney theft ring in New Orleans. No one is waking up in a bath­tub full of ice, even if a friend of a friend swears it hap­pe­ned to their cou­sin. If you are hell-bent on belie­ving the kidney-theft ring sto­ries, please see: http://urbanlegends.tqn.com/library/weekly/aa062997.htm

And I quote: “The Natio­nal Kid­ney Foun­da­tion has repea­tedly issued requests for actual vic­tims of organ thie­ves to come for­ward and tell their sto­ries. None have.“That’s “none ” as in “zero.” Not even your friend’s cousin.

3. Nei­man Mar­cus doesn’t really sell a $200 coo­kie recipe. And even if they do, we all have it. And even if you don’t, you can get a copy at:

http://www.bl.net/forwards/cookie.html

Then, if you make the recipe and decide the coo­kies are that awe­some, feel free to pass the for­mula on.

4. We all know all 500 ways to drive your room­ma­tes crazy, irri­tate co-workers, gross out bath­room stall neigh­bors and creep out peo­ple on an ele­va­tor. We also know exactly how many engi­neers, college stu­dents, Use­net pos­ters and peo­ple from each and every world eth­ni­city it takes to change a light bulb.

5. If the latest NASA roc­ket disaster(s) DID con­tain plu­to­nium that went to par­ti­cu­late over the eas­tern sea­board, do you REALLY think this infor­ma­tion would reach the public via an AOL chain-letter?

6. There is no “Good Times ” virus. In fact, you should never, ever, ever for­ward any email con­tai­ning any virus war­ning unless you first con­firm it at an actual site of an actual com­pany that actually deals with viruses.

Try: http://www.norton.com/ or http://www.kumite.com/

7. If your CC: list is regu­larly lon­ger than the actual con­tent of your mes­sage, you’ re pro­bably going to Hell.

8. If you’re using Out­look, I.E., or Nets­cape to write email, turn off the “HTML enco­ding.” Those of us on UNIX shells can’t read it, and don’t care enough to save the attach­ment and then view it with a web brow­ser, since you ‘re pro­bably for­war­ding us a copy of the Nei­man Mar­cus Coo­kie Recipe anyway.

9. If you still abso­lu­tely MUST for­ward that 10^th-generation mes­sage sho­wing ever­yone else who ‘s recei­ved it over the last 6 months. It sure wouldn’t hurt to get rid of all the “” (or the <) that begin each line. Besi­des, if it has gone around that many times — we’ ve pro­bably already seen it. But PLEASE LEARN HOW TO COPY AND PASTE!!!!!

10. Craig Sher­gold (or Sher­wood, or Sher­man, etc.) in England is not dying of can­cer or anything else at this time and would like ever­yone to stop­sen­ding him their busi­ness cards. He appa­rently is also no lon­ger a “little boy” either.

11. The “Make a Wish ” foun­da­tion is a real orga­ni­za­tion doing fine work, but they have had to esta­blish a spe­cial toll free hot­line in res­ponse to the large num­ber of Inter­net hoa­xes using their good name and repu­ta­tion. It is dis­trac­ting them from the impor­tant work they do.

12. If you are one of those insuf­fe­ra­ble idiots who for­wards anything that pro­mi­ses “something bad will hap­pen if you don’t,” then something bad will hap­pen to you if I ever meet you in a dark alley!

13. Women really are suf­fe­ring in Afgha­nis­tan, and PBS and NEA fun­ding are still vul­ne­ra­ble to attack (although not at the pre­sent time) but for­war­ding an email won ‘t help either cause in the least. If you want to help, con­tact your local legis­la­tive repre­sen­ta­tive, or get in touch with Amnesty Inter­na­tio­nal or the Red Cross. As a gene­ral rule, email “sig­na­tu­res” are easily faked and mean NOTHING to anyone with any power to do anything about wha­te­ver the peti­tion is com­plai­ning about NOTHING!!!

If you really care, and you’re not just trying to make your­self feel bet­ter when your ser­ver is down at work, then get the hell out­doors and start a REAL petition.

(PS — There is no bill pen­ding before Con­gress that will allow long dis­tance com­pa­nies to charge you for long dis­tance when using the Inter­net, nor for the Post Office to “tax ” e-mails.)

Bot­tom Line … com­po­sing e-mail or pos­ting something on the Net is as easy as wri­ting on the walls of a public res­troom. Don’t auto­ma­ti­cally believe it unless it’s pro­ven true… ASSUME it’s false, unless there is proof that it’s true. Get it? Got it? Good!

Microsoft Office 2010 Beta

So I am going through my email yes­ter­day and I come across an email from Tech­Net announ­cing the beta of Mic­ro­soft 2010.

Even though I am a huge sup­por­ter of Open Office, I deci­ded to give it a try. Since I already had a Hot­mail account, the regis­tra­tion was very sim­ple and within 5 minu­tes I was down­loa­ding the installer.

One of the first things I noti­ced when I began to ins­tall the appli­ca­tion, was the options that were not selec­ted. As seen in this screenshot, very few fea­tu­res are ins­ta­lled by default.

The ins­tall did seem to take a bit lon­ger than nor­mal, how much was part of the ins­ta­ller ver­sus my test machine is unde­ci­ded. None the less the ins­ta­ller did not take more than 20 minu­tes or so. Since I spend more time in the Word appli­ca­tion that was where I hea­ded first. It does appear that MS did lis­ten to a lot of users con­cer­ning the start orb and has repla­ced it with the File tab. The remain­der of the rib­bon bar looks remar­kably the same.

When you do go to the file tab, you get a lot more infor­ma­tion at your mouse point without having to do a lot of digging.

So off I go. As I men­tio­ned I use Open Office by default, so the first thing I did was open one of my docu­ments crea­ted in Wri­ter. It did take a few moments to bring the docu­ment up, but all of my for­mat­ting (such as it was) remai­ned. I could even save it back into the .odt exten­sion. There was the war­ning that the for­mat was not com­ple­tely com­pa­ti­ble. I ope­ned the file in Wri­ter again and everything was gol­den. That was a big check mark in my books right there. Mic­ro­soft has been drug over the coals (right­fully so) for not being more com­pa­ti­ble with other appli­ca­tions, this is a good step forward.

The next thing I wan­ted to look at was how it hand­les wri­ting to a blog (not just Mic­ro­soft Live spa­ces). I rea­li­zed how happy I was for the file menu to be back. With a cou­ple of clicks I was being promp­ted to setup my blog con­nec­tion. I selec­ted Word­press and ente­red the ser­ver and login infor­ma­tion. Next time I know, I am wri­ting the entry right now. One of the great fea­tu­res is the screenshot fea­ture. Like the snip­ping tool in Vista and Win­dows 7, the screenshot tool is won­der­ful. When you go to insert you see the option screenshot, with the down arrow, you have the abi­lity to just grab a full win­dow or use the snip­ping tool. All of the ima­ges in this post were crea­ted using this format.

So far, I must say I am actually impres­sed with the direc­tion of at least the Word por­tion. I will play with the excel por­tion later. Check back…