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The Wackiest Technology Tales of 2008
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Dec 14, 2008 10:11 PM
from the hindsight-is-much-better-than-20/20 dept.
from the hindsight-is-much-better-than-20/20 dept.
coondoggie writes "Despite the daily drumbeat of new and improved hardware or software, the tech industry isn't all bits and bytes. Some interesting things happen along the way too. Like floating data centers, space geekonauts, shape shifting robots and weird bedfellows (like Microsoft and Jerry Seinfeld). What we include here is an example of what we thought were the best,
slightly off-center stories of 2008."
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Wow.. (Score:4, Informative)
This sounded interesting.. but just really didn't hold my attention. Most of the stuff fell under one of two categories:
1) stuff which is cool, but that I already knew about ..
2) stuff which wasn't really all that interesting
Additionally the little blurb of info the give on each was fairly dry .. .. and they have (at least for my browser) added some annoying anti-"just view the print version" stuff..
AND GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN!
Re:Wow.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree, it was a boring slideshow...but what did you expect?
IT and science aren't known for their amazing comic value (well unless perhaps you consider quantum mechanics - I'd call that stuff wacky). The wackiest things I see in IT are management decisions, particularly when they ask for something without a clue what it will take to build, then set a ridiculous time line. It's even wackier when a senior manager has a revelation and you realize that he's missed something big and lost the plot altogether. What isn't so much fun is explaining why a particular project won't work as intended, or trying to talk someone out of shooting themselves in the foot before losing their attention.
Parent
Re:Wow.. (Score:5, Funny)
(well unless perhaps you consider quantum mechanics - I'd call that stuff wacky)
-Hey Electron, what are you doing? You'd better not be eating my Christmas cookies!
-Nope, I'm over here!
-Hey, my cookies are gone! Damn it Heisenberg, isn't there any way to compensate?
-Judging by the size of your microscope, I'd say someone's compensating!
Yep, the Subatomic Sitcom practically writes itself.
Parent
Re:Wow.. (Score:5, Funny)
Atom 1: Whats wrong?
Atom 2: I lost an electron
Atom 1: Are you sure?
Atom 2: I'm positive.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"How much is that?" he asks the barman.
The barman replies "For you, there's no charge"
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IT and science aren't known for their amazing comic value
What about the Ig Nobel awards?
http://improbable.com/ [improbable.com]
This year's chemistry prize was split between two teams of doctors. One team discovered that Coke is an effective spermacide. The other team discovered that it is not.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A slide show (Score:5, Informative)
Even those with the attention span of a goldfish (Score:5, Informative)
Even the slides were boring.
Parent
On slashdot people use the subject line... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Er...I was hoping to get modded funny. But now I think maybe your post is funnier.
It's 'their', (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Oh right -- this is slashdot.
I meant "Was their something more to that sentence?"
Re:On slashdot people use the subject line... (Score:5, Funny)
Their.
Congratulations you're qualified to work in an Indian call center!
Parent
Re:On slashdot people use the subject line... (Score:5, Funny)
And those apostrophes they put in "its" are really annoying too. A misplaced apostrophe sounds like nails going down a chalkboard.
Anyway, those are my two principle complaints.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I had one guy use 'they're' once. And he kept repeating it until I stopped him and explained the difference.
Old Get Smart routine
"It's the Craw!"
No! Not "Craw' it's 'CRAW'
Re (Score:2)
ally?
Re:A slide show (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
New Here (Score:2, Funny)
Pah! Imposter! (Score:4, Funny)
You're not a patch on the real New Here [slashdot.org]. That guy's posted exactly the same comment (and subject) over 200 times in the last 5 years.
You've done it.... twice. And you couldn't even maintain consistency for those two comments.
Pah, imposter I say. (I won't even get started on your grammar.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So you are saying he is new here?
Hmmmmnm, their post contained poor grammar / punctuation, repeating an old joke (badly), offtopic & didn't read the article....
They've obviously been around long enough to absorb typical slashdot culture!
Re:Pah! Imposter! (Score:4, Funny)
(I won't even get started on your grammar.
Lest anyone else gets started on your punctuation... ;)
It was awfully nice of you to provide the closing parenthesis for him.
Parent
Re:A slide show (Score:4, Informative)
Would've been a much better article if it didn't force use of javascript and didn't force you through some 30 pages of crap. 3 pages of crap would've sufficed.
Interesting how the delivery mechanism is so hated by many techies, but so loved by others. /luddite
Parent
How did this get approved for the main page? (Score:5, Insightful)
There isn't anything relevant or newsworthy in the entire piece that was the subject of this post.
The 'article' is merely a slide-show with some of the most poorly written reporting I have ever encountered. News today is usually infotainment and not information anymore and this is a prime example. Even entries to this piece that should be newsworthy are presented so awfully that I could barely muster the willpower to proceed to the last slide.
Networkworld.com ... never visiting this website again.
Re: (Score:2)
Not only that, it's not entertaining. Even rank amateurs can do better, as this InFauxmercial [youtube.com] shows.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Sunday night + Something vaguely criticizing Microsoft == Slashdot Front Page
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There was one thing in that slideshow that caught my attention: Sprint losing customers.
Now, that's not a shocker here. I've certainly suffered through some poor phone customer service with them, and some poor coverage problems. They've seemed to embarked on a company wide effort to change that, but I can only hope for their sake that it's not too late.
Of course, AT&T with the iPhone is probably quite a draw.
I will say this for Sprint: The biggest difference I noticed between them was that Verizon p
One word (Score:3, Insightful)
Idle
Favorite Error Message of 2008 (Score:4, Funny)
FYI m200 tablet with nvidia chip, The graphics had some lines in it, and the factory driver would bsod.
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To me it looked as though everything were transcribed from handwritten notes by someone with no command of English.
If you envision all the words printed out onto paper in shoddy penmanship, it is easy to envision similarities between some of those characters.
-b
Wacky? (Score:2, Funny)
Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
Might as well talk about Vegetarian Vampires, African-American KKK members, Atheist Christian Pastors, or Dotcom CEOS worth billions who still live in their Mom's basement. It just makes about as much sense as this story.
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Might as well talk about Vegetarian Vampires
I think fark.com had an article posted about that the other day.
So then tangent? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Let's make a deal... (Score:4, Funny)
Anyone caught submitting slide shows featuring minimal content smeared over 43 colorful but vapid pages should be punished. I recommend death by stoning, preferably using a truckload of rusty 486s and a pallet or two of 14" monitors instead of boulders. As for the clever soul who deemed the content on the front page, I can only assume he/she/it is blind and suffering the after-effects of a decades-old untreated case of syphilis.
No. Wait. This must be a sign that slashdot has been secretly acquired by Condé Nast. I anxiously await the premiere issue of Linux Vogue. Sigh.
That's steel not brass... (Score:2)
The little blurb about people stealing brass from bomb ranges showed empty steel casings in the picture
The Gates/Seinfeld thing. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
While discussing the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ad spots Microsoft ran a few months back, we chanced upon perhaps the real thinking behind it. . .
Universally hailed as a magnificent failure, we wondered exactly how with Microsoft using all the expertise of the P.R. giant, Waggener Edstrom, and the quarter-billion dollars spent on the project, such a thing could be possible. How could, with those kinds of resources, anybody achieve such a catastrophic P.R. failure?
Then we realized, "No. It wasn't a failure at all. It was a brilliant success!"
Here's the logic:
After the self-destruction of Vista, Microsoft was in free fall. Investors were mightily distressed at Balmer's ineptitude. And so, as happens when huge corporations are desperate, they went to Waggener Edstrom for a rescue plan.
The P.R. firm sat down and worked out the psychology and set up the following three act show: Act I involved subtle media manipulation presenting Balmer as the idiot he is, the weak link responsible for Vista's failure. This has been accomplished.
Act II involved running a bunch of ads which were designed to do two things:
1. Make sure that people knew that Gates was still involved with Microsoft; that he'd gone walkabout, but was still there in the wings.
2. Show Gates being a hopeless geek. --He was portrayed as an awkward fool who couldn't act and had no screen presence. The whole series left you feeling painfully embarrassed and despite yourself, kind of sorry for him. --Think about that! When EVER has the world felt sorry for Bill Gates? But investors don't want him to be a charismatic actor. They want him to be a hopeless geek/genius who will rescue their share values.
Now, act III involves the placement of the upcoming Windows 7 in the public conscious, which, surprise, surprise, is getting lots of positive response and sympathy, general good-will and a collective hope that it won't suck. (At least from the general population; Slashdotters are a breed apart.)
Not a bad bit of P.R. work. Sneaky and manipulative, playing on those hidden aspects of the human mind to achieve its objectives. That's why Microsoft pays Waggener Edstrom 250 million dollars a year. The most powerful advertising happens when you think it isn't working.
-FL
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Now, act III involves the placement of the upcoming Windows 7 in the public conscious, which, surprise, surprise, is getting lots of positive response and sympathy, general good-will and a collective hope that it won't suck.
1. "conscious" is an adjective. Perhaps you mean "conscience".
2. I do not see a logical connection between "acts I and II" and "act III". My understanding is that Windows Vista is widely perceived as garbage, and simply therefore, people bent on Windows will be optimistic about its successor.
b
Desperation and bloodlust (Score:3, Insightful)
1. "conscious" is an adjective. Perhaps you mean "conscience".
Ha ha. Right you are! --The funny part is that I had it right in my first draft but switched it around on a sleepy whim because I mixed it up with the idea of Pinocchio's cricket, which just sounded weird.
2. I do not see a logical connection between "acts I and II" and "act III". My understanding is that Windows Vista is widely perceived as garbage, and simply therefore, people bent on Windows will be optimistic about its successor.
Public opini
Re: (Score:2)
(The thing about conscious vs conscience is a pet peeve of mine, because so many people use it as you did while firmly believing that it is acceptable as a noun, and such usage always grates on me.)
You're right about the bloodthirsty dog pack phenomenon, but I'm not convinced that the Seinfeld/Gates foray achieved anything to counter it. To my view, it simply reinforced the notion of Microsoft being out of touch with popular taste and sensibility, and further evidence that they are wildly trying to do some
Public Relations and the state of Psychology today (Score:2)
Normally I'd agree with you wholeheartedly, except in this case Microsoft handed control over to the second largest P.R. firm in the U.S., which certainly doesn't share Balmer's abysmal understanding of the business world and MS's customer base.
The more I learn about big gun Public Relations and just how advanced the science of psychology is today, --and just how little of this remarkable knowledge is recognized by the general public, the more astonished and skeptical I become about pretty much everything r
That's a tad far fetched. (Score:2)
Occam's razor leads me to conclude that the Seinfeld/Gates ad campaign was a failure, not a step in some grand plan.
-jcr
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Occam's razor leads me to conclude that the Seinfeld/Gates ad campaign was a failure, not a step in some grand plan.
Occam never studied marketing, whereas the guy I was discussing this with spent a well-compensated 20 years in the field. In any case, Occam's razor contains a serious logical flaw, (bonus points if you can work it out), and should be used far less liberally than it usually is.
--To get an idea of just how devious P.R. firms are, research the way cigarettes and razor blades were sold to women.
Re:That's a tad far fetched. (Score:4, Funny)
Occam's razor leads me to conclude that the Seinfeld/Gates ad campaign was a failure, not a step in some grand plan.
I don't think Occam's razor has ever applied to Microsoft. Things that look like genius strategic moves turn out to be blind luck, while things that are absolute disasters emerge from what appears to be their most insightful thinking.
Parent
zzzzzzzz (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Really, do they need so much capacity that they have to resort to the ocean?
Water has an incredible Specific Heat Capacity [wikipedia.org]. Just as a quick guess, the idea would be to use the water as a giant heatsink.