You Say Tomato, I Say “Oppose The Gay Agenda”
A tomato yesterday (photo by Damon Green)
In February this year the president of conservative think-tank The Sutherland Institute met with the organisation's largest donor. The donor had a number of ideas on how to advance the institute's goals, and one was to improve the website. He had visited the site recently, and was concerned that their message wasn't being communicated properly.
You see, one of The Sutherland Insitute's governing principles is "Limited Government", but the website said they believed in "Limited Government Except When We Don't Get Our Way". Maybe so, but isn't that a little too direct? The Institute also believes in "Personal Responsibility" but the site had it as "Personal Responsibility & Taking Away Others Choice". You can applaud the honesty, but the statement does lack polish.
In fact, all of the "governing principles" seemed to have got a little mangled:
| Governing Principle | Website Version |
| Limited Government | Limited Government Except When We Don't Get Our Way |
| Family | Our Bigoted Definition of Family |
| Private Property | Oppose The Gay Agenda |
| Religion | The One True Religion |
| Personal Responsibility | Personal Responsibility & Taking Away Others Choice |
| Charity | Anti Same Sex Marriage Legislation |
| Free Markets | Free Markets, Exclude Homosexuals from Places of Employment |
Now the president was awfully confused because they had recently updated the website, and he was pretty sure it was all in order. Upon further investigation, he discovered that the donor had been looking not at the official Sutherland Institute website at sutherlandinstitute.org, but a parody website at sutherlandinstitute.com.
You might think the extreme governing principles would give the game away. Or maybe the forthcoming event which features a discussion called "Hiding Your Fear of Homosexuals". And if all that fails, then at least there's the text "This website is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the Sutherland Institute. It is a parody site, an opposing political platform." But nah, clearly it's the right site — there's the logo at the top!
See the difference? (Photo by Hysterical Bertha)
Anyway, the president had to explain several times to the donor that the website had nothing to do with them, because he didn't understand that there was a difference between dot-com and dot-org. You can only imagine the confusion if someone told him about the 278 other top-level domains. Actually the president himself had to spend "several minutes" studying the parody site (which consists of a single page) to realise it wasn't their own. Yes, despite the words "it is a parody site".
The President, all upset, went straight to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to get the offending site handed over, presumably so other gullible and illiterate visitors wouldn't get confused. The parody site owner didn't dignify proceedings by putting his side of the story across, but that didn't matter because the WIPO panel ruled in his favour anyway.
The moral of this story is, um, well... it depends what you believe. Maybe it's to always be tolerant of others' views. Or that freedom of speech is an absolute right. But I think it's this: always register the dot-com.
Real site: www.sutherlandinstitute.org
Parody site: www.sutherlandinstitute.com
Thanks to Domain Name Wire
Modern Internet Predicted in 1969
On 29 October 1969, the first two nodes of ARPANET — the network which was to become the internet — were connected.
That same year a TV program was eerily accurate in predicting the modern internet. Here it is:
So Mum gets a big monitor for shopping, and seems unimpressed to the point of despair by the wares on offer, but decides to buy something anyway. She also gets two little monitors for snooping on the kids, and any unwitting guests in the swimming pool.
It's a sign of the times then that Dad has three big screens to play with. On the first he gets to see the damage inflicted on his credit card earlier in the day by Mum, and his decision to beat her senseless for it is written all over his face. (That was fine in 1969.)
But what did "Father" use the other two monitors for? The program was so clairvoyant predicting internet shopping, banking, webcams and email (aka "home post office") that there can only be one answer: the middle screen was for porn and the third screen was for... more porn. That's why Dad needed three screens, and Mum's best hope for dodging a beating.
In 1969 they thought it was better to talk about replacing cables than go into that.
Airport Worker Crushed Under 100 Foot Stack of Laptops
I'm sorry, I've misled you. You can allow yourself a sigh of relief (or a grunt of disappointment), because no-one has been flattened by a tower of computers. Curse my name, if it makes you feel better.
But it's a miracle that no-one really has been injured, because the lost property department at LAX (the main airport serving Los Angeles) deals with 1,200 misplaced laptops every week. If they are one inch thick on average, you get a pile 100 feet high. That's the height of a ten storey building. Amazing. Even more fantastic: ten times as many laptops are lost when you take all US airports into account.
Blimey.
...then dump your laptop and run away barefoot
Those statistics are in a recent report commissioned by Dell (PDF). But this report is fishier than Billingsgate. If visitors to LAX are really losing that many laptops — roughly one every eight minutes — I'm flying out there right now to pick up some freebies. Confused travellers must be running around like headless chickens, arms flapping wildly, as their precious computers are carelessly discarded on every available flat surface. Laptops left in the departure lounge, laptops balanced on toilet seats, laptops blocking every security checkpoint and gate. Laptops everywhere. They might as well glue them all together and use them as flooring — it will be easier and cheaper than storing them all in the lost property office, which by now must be the size of a hangar.
I'm not a scientist, so it would be foolish of me to criticise this study further. But I am foolish, so here goes. According to the report 40% of laptops are lost at security checkpoints, giving a monthly total of 20,000 that are somehow lost in the few seconds they spend inside an x-ray machine. Luckily, US airport security checkpoints are managed by a single organisation: the Transport Security Administration (TSA). A spokesman has stated that "On average, TSA receives approximately 75 lost or missing laptop claims each month, nationwide." That's 75 out of 20,000, apparently. So of all these travellers who nonchalantly dump their computers at security checkpoints, less than half of one percent of bother to try and get them back. Either that, or someone's numbers are looking a bit dodgy.
But let's be fair for a moment. Real airport security is fairly new to Americans; the TSA was only set up in response to 9/11. Before then, you could merrily dance through security checkpoints with pen knives, daggers and swords and the security personnel wouldn't bat an eyelid. Because they were asleep. And blind. And they passed away weeks ago. Hold baggage wasn't checked at all. Proper security checks make Americans nervous, and maybe, just maybe, they are so happy to get through them that the sacrifice of a laptop is a small price to pay.
Maybe.
The Sound of Found, My Arse
If you are like 99% of the population you will neither know nor care about Bing, Microsoft's month-old search engine. I'm going to tell you why you should know (and care) about the biggest shake-up of the industry since, well, the last time Microsoft launched a new search engine.
Only kidding. Give yourself a big pat on the back for paying no attention. Bing is never going to get anywhere, because it has a bloody silly name.
Why is it called Bing anyway? Well, according to Microsoft, "bing!" is the winning noise evoked by a successful search. They optimistically call this "The Sound of Found". That's bollocks. Bing, dear reader, is the sound of:
Do you feel comfortable using one of these? BING!
Arrogance and Desperation
You arrive late at a hotel, tired and irritable, only to find the reception unmanned. You spy a domed brass reception bell. Unfortunately, these bells are loaded with images of lordship and servitude. What's more, you're not sure if anyone ever uses them or if they're just for show. Minutes pass while you stare at the bell, before you finally overcome the mental anguish and give it a good slap. BING! It's much louder than you expected. Also, the receptionist appears at exactly the same time and is now looking at you like you are a complete tosser.
Loneliness and Poverty
There's nothing worse than buying a stack of easy-cook meals-for-one. If you were buying only one you could add a four-pack of beer and joke with the checkout chick: "The missus is out tonight and I don't know how to work the cooker! What am I like, eh?" Laughs all round. But that doesn't get you the three-for-a-fiver special offer.
The fact is you have no-one waiting for you at home, not tonight. Not ever. When you buy your week's supply of ready meals, on the verge of tears, there's no witty banter. Just despair and pity. At home you use your twenty-year-old microwave to heat up the first plastic carton of slop. After four minutes, BING! It's done. Now you can cry into your volcanic spag bol and watch repeats of Friends.
Homo-erotic Confusion
Friends. If only.
Now, what was the name of the funny sarcastic one? Oh yes, Chandler. Chandler Bing. Prone to long man-hugs with room-mate Joey. Shy with the ladies. Not keen on sports. Loves musicals. Father's a drag queen. Yet, oddly, he married Monica Geller. You know, the bossy competitive one. Deep voice. Has a bit of a man-face. Argh! Chandler was clearly gay. But Chandler who? BING!
* * * * *
Thanks to all these great connotations, we will soon give up Googling and start Binging. Or Bunging. Maybe Bonging? No-one knows. If they've got any sense, no-one cares either.
You Just Lost The Game
I'm sorry, you just lost The Game. And if you weren't playing The Game, I'm doubly sorry — because you are now and you just lost.
Before we go deep into the land of confusion I should point out that The Game does not confirm to what we normally expect of a game. No apparatus is required as it takes place only inside the heads of the players. You can't win in the traditional (game-ending) way — winning is rather an ongoing state. You can lose however, and often do, but The Game doesn't end there either. In fact, The Game doesn't really have an end or, some would argue, even a beginning.
Schools of thought differ about when you start playing The Game. Some believe that we have all been playing it since the dawn of time, but can only lose once we know the rules. Others assert that mankind only started playing in the late seventies, when The Game was invented by Cambridge University science fiction nerds. Still others think that you aren't playing The Game until you learn the rules. Whoever is right, it matters little, because by any yardstick you are definitely playing it now.
A very popular Christmas present, for all the wrong reasons
Here are the rules of The Game:
RULE 1
You are always playing The Game
RULE 2
You lose if you think about The Game
RULE 3
Loss must be announced
So the aim of The Game is to forget that you are playing it, as quickly as possible and for as long as possible. During those glorious intervals you are winning The Game, until someone or something reminds you that you are playing. Winning The Game sounds great, but as you are (by definition) not aware you are doing it there's no proud moment of triumph, only a bittersweet tang when you lose and realise that you had been winning up until that point.
Losing is unavoidable in The Game, so the best way to enjoy it is by making other people lose too, preferably without simultaneously losing yourself — which can only mean hiding notes telling the hapless finder that they have lost. Which they have, until they can forget they are playing again.
What has all this got to do with the internet? Well, the net might not be the place where The Game was invented, but it is definitely the place where it was made popular. Really really popular. You see, it's the perfect medium for reminding huge numbers of people that they are playing The Game and, therefore, have lost. Surely that only works if they already know about The Game? Well, yes. Good catch, batman. But you can do that too. Just paste in the rules, or a link to Lose The Game, and a whole new raft of unwitting (and probably unwilling) players is born.
How many people are playing The Game? It's hard to tell, but its Facebook group has 125,207 members so that's an indication. I recently joined the group, which was a very bad move, as I only need to look at my profile now to lose.
Like all the best internet memes, online popularity has spawned mainstream media coverage. In December 2008 the free Metro newspaper informed 3 million unlucky readers that they are now playing The Game. Articles and radio shows have added millions more.
Soon the whole world will be playing. And losing.
Know What I Meme?
It all began with a dancing baby. Or was it a hamster? Either way, we laughed innocently in the mid-to-late nineties when these crazy animations appeared on our foot-deep monitors. It was all courtesy of an archaic technology called "email", a way a way of sending private messages to specific people. (In those days you had to say who you wanted to communicate with, rather than your ramblings being automatically fed to all your subscribers/followers/friends you barely know.)
We've come a long way, hamster. I mean baby. Nowadays, these crazes are spread on social networking sites, remixed on YouTube, referenced endlessly on nerdy discussion boards, and finally end up on Family Guy (they're the weird bits you frown at). After toying with monikers like "virals", "internet phenomena" and "misuse of company email", these international in-jokes have a new name: Internet memes.
Family Guy: Where memes go to die. In this case, Chuck Norris Facts.
Why are they called memes? The explanation is really boring. But since you asked: "meme" was coined by author Richard Dawkins in 1976 and means an idea that is passed from person to person. Sociologists cream their pants discussing memes in hushed tones, as if a cat that (apparently) wants a cheeseburger is the pinnacle of high art. But the rest of us can carry on calling them catch phrases, in-jokes and random internet crap.
So what's the latest for the meme crowd? Well, they're busy building up gay potatoes, elephants painted like pandas and fake celebrity deaths. Expect to see them on Family Guy in about a year.
It’s Not My Fault — I’m Still In Beta
Beta version: software that is almost finished and is released to expert users for final testing. After a short while the beta label is dropped, and the public get their grubby mitts on the product. Job done.
Anyway, that's how it should work. But everything seems to be in beta nowadays, and everybody has to use it in that state, not just experts. Forever, it seems. Google's email service (Gmail) was released as a beta on 1 April 2004, and it still sports the label today — five years later. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 was in beta testing for a year and a half. Windows emulator for Linux geeks WINE was a beta product for 15 years, until 2008. The perpetual beta, they call it.
Google and their bloody betas
If I were a suspicious person I would think there were cynical motives at play. I am a suspicious person. I think there are cynical motives at play. By being perpetually in beta, they're saying "don't complain if it doesn't work properly". Worse, they're also being pushy — when you use something that's in beta you become a beta tester, and should give them detailed feedback on any problems you come across. Cheeky buggers.
If software companies can run endless beta tests, why can't I? As a human being, it makes a lot more sense: I'm never expected to be "finished" anyway. That settles it. I'm in beta, forever. And every person in the world is beta testing me. If my ill-chosen words offend you, don't get upset. If my clumsy horseplay injures you, don't complain. If my home experiments with flammable liquids disfigure you horrifically, don't howl. Instead kindly fill in a report form detailing what, when, where, why, what, why, and why the error occurred. Screenshots would be a help too. After all, I'm still in beta. Thanks for helping to iron out the bugs.
Update (9 July): Clearly influenced by my blog, Google have taken Gmail out of beta! In a bizarre twist, Gmail users can use a special setting which "soothes the soul by putting the familiar beta sticker back on the Google Mail logo". Concrete proof that to Google the term means, well, nothing at all — it's just a bit of decoration for logos that takes a while to grow out of, like a belly button piercing.
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