SEEING THE SITES

On the Web, Both Wired and Weird

Greetings, Fellow Webheads...
     Despite the well-advertised dot-com meltdown last year, we
are still pretty wedded to our computers.  After all, it isn't
our fault that some folks let this E-everything stuff go to their
heads.  You could kind of see the craziness peaking about the
time some guys bid $10 million for a web site name
("Year2000.com").  Not a business, or even a viable idea, just
the name.  When you start your business $10 mill in the hole, is
it any wonder there's no money for any of the usual business
trivia like a product, a sales staff or customers?
     Then there are all of those truly bizarre sites out there on
the Weird Wide Web.  All it takes is a short tour around
cyberspace to convince yourself that the former village idiot is
now the global village idiot.  The Watergun Museum has a web site
(at  http://www.sinasnet.nl/Watergun.HTML ).  So does the
International Ghost Hunters Society, the "When Good Toilets Go
Bad" web site (features positive stories of the world's most
necessary home appliance), and there's even a "History of the
Band-Aid" web site (and that's the stick-on bandage, not the rock
& roll relief fund).  The web tells you the weirdest, strangest,
oddest bits of meaninglessly trivial information on subjects you
never dreamed of asking about.  That's just a clarification for
those of you who believed that was what I did.
     And we haven't even ventured into the wild, weird world of
chat rooms.  After a while, you begin to believe that the USENET
and chat rooms are all populated by characters from Lewis
Carrol's "Alice in Wonderland."

     "I know what you're thinking about," said Tweedledum:
     "but it isn't so, nohow."

     "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it
     might be; and if it were so, it would be: but as it
     isn't, it ain't.  'That's logic." 

     Now honestly...  Doesn't that sound like 95% of the chat
rooms and lists out there?  The flamers and bean-brained twerps
think they rule the cyberworld because of their ability to flame
anonymous phlegm.  The main feature of most chat rooms is that
they compare to mature, intelligent discourse pretty as a chess
tournament is to nude Jello wrestling.
     Thanks this week to all of you folks on our address list,
especially:  Bernie & Donna Becwar, The Will Family, Peter Adler,
Tim McChain, R.J. Tully, Jack & Sherrie Gervais, The Petersons,
The Macareno Family, Bruce Gonzo, Brian Siegl, Paul Roser, Jerry
Taff, Charles Beckman, Kerry Miller, Yoshie Takahashi, Jan
Michalski, and Mary Crow.  Now, as to my personal philosophy for
finding things on the World Wide Web, I just follow what the
Cheshire Cat told Alice in Wonderland:  "If you don't know where
you're going, it doesn't matter which path you take."
     Have A TCP/IP Kind Of Week,


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MOVING RIGHT ALONG....
------------------
     Just a quick reminder to those of you who haven't already
done so:  the new address for SUNFUN is SUNFUN@wi.rr.com  
This Compuserve address, after a couple of decades of use, is not
long for this world, and will probably die by the end of the
month.  Just so you know to check the address books to be sure
you have the right address for contributions.

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     "Go not to Usenet for counsel, for it will say both no, yes,
     maybe, no and yes..."
                            - Based on the J.R.R. Tolkien
                              quotation: "Go not to the elves for
                              advice, for they will say both yes
                              and no."

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REAL FLAMERS...
------------
     Speaking of flames, what is it that Microsoft had in mind
with that Internet Explorer ad of a little while back, trying to
convince us of how cheery and positive things are when you surf
the world using MicroGates products?  In the background of the
commercial is a chorus wailing away on a particularly intense bit
of classical music - a chorus from Mozart's "Requiem" - which may
give a clearer idea of the way we should feel being stuck in a
Windows Worlds.  While the ad cheerily asked, "Where Do You Want
To Go Today?," the chorus was singing:
          "Confutatis maledictus, 
          Flammis acribus addictus..."
Latin for, "The damned and the accursed are convicted to flames
of hell."
     I guess we know now what the folks in Gatesland think of
us...


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     "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is
     probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners."
                            - Ernst Jan Plugge


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     "My wife got a car sun shade at the local Win 95 launch
     event and on one side it says:

               'I was there at the [START].'

          On the other side it says:

               'I need assistance.
               Please Call Police.'"


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ERROR SUPPLY
------------
     The good news is: computers have slowly become more clear
about the messages they give when things go wrong.  Not that any
of these are likely to help you tell what to do in any real way,
but it is nice to know that the machine now understands that
something stupid went down.  Still, these are the top vote-
getters in our poll of "Least Helpful Error Message":


     Windows Media Player:

          "The maximum number of secrets that may be
          stored in a single system has been exceeded."


     Oni (A Game Program):

                    "damn!
               Blam, Oni crashed
                    [OK]"


     Startopia:

               "Could not set Cooperative Level
               Now THAT'S what I call an error.
               Seeya!!"


     InstallShield Professional:

               "A required resource was
                    [OK]"


     Microsoft Windows 2000, Professional and Server:

          "Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and
          Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords"


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     "I first realized that computers were going to be an
     absurd, surrealistic way to earn a living when I forgot
     to plug in the keyboard on an early model.  The error
     message was (and is to this day, on many machines):

                    KEYBOARD ERROR
                  Keyboard not present
                 Hit [F1] to continue..."


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THE CAT'S OUT OF THE BAG...
------------------------
     Remember the weird photo that went around the web (many
times) over the last year supposedly showing the "world's largest
cat" being held up by his owner?  In the photo, a smiling,
bearded gent who looked like a rather athletic Santa Claus holds
up a monster feline said to be 69 inches (175 cm) from nose to
tail and weighing in 87 lbs. (just under 40 kg).
     Well, Cordell Hauglie sure remembers.  His name may not ring
any bells for you, but he happens to be the guy in the photo,
holding his own cat Jumper.  Jumper, by the way, is only average
size for a tabby - certainly nothing like the gargantuan kitty in
the photo.  So, what happened?  Just a little fooling with
Photoshop.
     "I really had no intention of creating a hoax," he said in
an interview in response to efforts to locate the photo's
creator.  He's amazed by all the attention his innocent
experiment has gotten.  He's even more amazed that some people
actually thought the "giant cat" was real.
     Hauglie wasn't trying to astonish the world when he used his
Photoshop program to meld snapshots of himself and his standard-
sized kitty to create the illusion that the animal was four times
its real size.  All he wanted to do was amuse his daughter.  Then
he sent a few copies to his friends as a joke.  From there, some
anonymous writer concocted the weird tale of the giant cat.  The
story was totally bogus, of course.
     Hauglie views the photo's incredible, unintended journey as
a cautionary tale about sending stuff out on the Internet. 
     "Once it's out there," he warns, "it's totally out of your
control.  Luckily this was a relatively benign thing, but if some
guy and his dumb cat can go around the world, you've got to be
careful."  (North Renfrew (Ontario) Times)


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          "There are two major products that come out of
     Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.

          "We don't believe this to be a coincidence."

                            - Jeremy S. Anderson


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SURE SIGNS THAT, YES, YOU ARE A TECHNERD
----------------------------------------

   - You turn down Packers tickets so you can play interactive
     Dungeons and Dragons with some guy you've never met in
     Cleveland

   - You look like Dilbert, right down to the white shirt and tie

   - You have a life-size cutout of Bill Gates hanging on your
     wall, either for admiration or target practice

   - You lie about what you look like when talking to someone
     online

   - You email your Dog

   - You really care who is more popular: Kirk or Picard

   - You actually like doing your brother's homework.

   - You have about 20 books on style and attitude and subscribe
     to 10 teen and fashion magazines and still can't seem to
     approach anything like cool.

   - You know that 0xF03A is greater than 1111000000110110

   - Every item on this list sounds oddly familiar.

   - You think of the Osmonds as "alternative rock".

   - You have "days of the week" pocket protectors - different
     for each day

   - You know what URL stands for

   - You really envy Bill Gates for his charm and way with people

   - You can't travel without an ISP hookup

   - Your wardrobe consists largely of free T-Shirts picked up at
     trade shows

   - You serve coffee to you friends in mugs having Microsoft and
     3-Com on them - that's all you have in your kitchen

   - You`re reading this list hoping you`re not one.


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YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY HAVE AGREED...
--------------------------------
          "All of computing plays like a theater of the absurd... 
     You agree to all of the demands in software licenses by
     opening the box - which has the software license inside.  So
     you have, in effect, agreed to an agreement that you hadn't
     yet seen to agree to.  And the licenses themselves seem to
     have been written by lawyers from Mad Magazine.  For one
     example, a Corel software license requires that any dispute
     from copies of the product sold outside Canada must be
     resolved in Ireland.


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   - Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) applies to
     Usenet.

        Corollary:  In an unmoderated newsgroup, no one can agree
                    on what constitutes the 10%.

        Corollary:  Nothing guarantees that the 10% isn't crap,
                    too.

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     Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.

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     CYBERWOCKY
     ----------
          (With Apologies to Lewis Carroll)


          'Twas email, and the FTP
          Did route and telnet to the node.
          All mimsy were the prompts and codes
          To let the scripts download.

          "Beware the Internet, my son!
          The posts that spam, the speech that's free!
          Beware the Netscape cache, and shun
          The QWERTY keyboard's clutch!"

          He took his scrolling mouse in hand.
          Long time a higher bandwidth sought --
          And wished had he for his PC
          A larger memory bought.

          And, as that wistful thought he gripped,
          The Internet, with baits of flame,
          Ran applets through the Javascript,
          And mailbombed as it came!

          Swooped in the graphics on each page
          The mouse he double-clicked!
          And 'twas absurd, the hyped-up turd
          That spamming beast so wicked.

          With POP and IMAP he fought the beast
          His upload went snicker snack,
          He felt it flip, and with a ZIP
          He came galumphing back.

          "And didst thou tame the USENET toy?
          Come interface my beamish boy.
          O Lycos day, Yahoo!  Excite!"
          He messaged from his site.

          'Twas email, and the FTP
          Did route and telnet to the node.
          All mimsy were the prompts and codes
          To let the scripts download.


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