Language Perplexities

Posted on October 8, 2001 by Pace Arko

Here’s a question: How come we don’t say “Czechia, ” “Czechland” or just “Czech” as opposed to “Czech Republic?” French come from France. Japanese come from Japan. Argentines come from Argentina. Poles come from Poland. Slovaks come from Slovakia. How come Czechs don’t come from Czechia? Didn’t they ever figure out the proper word ending for the name of the land of Czechs? What’s the deal?

Another thing I find annoying is the Internet slang term, newbie. I hate this word. It’s too cutsie–sort of like webmaster is too cutsie–smacks of AOL and Compuserve. Why aren’t perfectly serviceable words like neophyte, greenhorn and novice sufficient?

I also loath all those recently coined chat acronyms like LOL, IIRC, FWIW, RTFM and so on. I prefer to write all my cliches and phrases out in full, TYVM!

Posted in Miscellaneous | 3 Comments

Reports on the Death of Irony are Premature

Posted on October 4, 2001 by Pace Arko

A few days ago I saw a Ford commercial that mortified me.

It was blatantly using the events of September the Eleventh to–get this–sell us more cars.

Apparently some people are amazed at how quickly people’s pursuit of trivia has reasserted itself but, when marketoids cheapen every emotion in a ploy to sell us more stuff, it hard not to retreat into irony as self-defense.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Reports on the Death of Irony are Premature

Added a Protest Badge

Posted on October 2, 2001 by Pace Arko

To protest the W3C’s proposal for “reasonable and non-discriminatory” patents, I have added a dark cloud over my validation badges. This means that I support W3C standards but only if they are royalty-free. The idea and badge came from the Userfunded Organization.

Posted in Webmastering | Comments Off on Added a Protest Badge

Computers With Alternative Energy Sources

Posted on October 2, 2001 by Pace Arko

NEC just recently developed a new high density fuel cell to power PDAs and laptops. Meanwhile SolarHost is a relatively new ISP/site hosting company whoes server farm is powered entirely by photovoltaic cells. And I just read about Australian plans to build huge energy collector called a solar chimney–perhaps SolarHost should look into that.

Posted in Computer Support | Comments Off on Computers With Alternative Energy Sources

W3C, Tool of Corporate Masters?!

Posted on October 1, 2001 by Pace Arko

What the hell? Just a few minutes ago I learned that the World Wide Web Consortium, probably bowing to pressure from some of its corporate members, tried to pull a fast one on us by submitting a proposal to patent key Web technology. This proposal was announced in the middle of August with a very suspicious lack of promotion. They only allowed a month of comment, which hardly anyone made because hardly anyone was aware of this policy move.

Perhaps it was an oversight but considering the controversial nature of this policy it looks like deliberate evasion. The corporate members of the W3C were hoping to slip this by us.

Well, we of the web development and design community say NO! We aren’t going to stand for this!

Posted in Webmastering | Comments Off on W3C, Tool of Corporate Masters?!

Medical Stuff

Posted on September 26, 2001 by Pace Arko

Recently doctors in New York used waldos to do gall bladder surgery in France. Now they are thinking of building something like the autodocs that Larry Niven wrote about.

In vaguely related news, research has found a gene that appears to promote the growth of new tissue in mice.

Posted in Science and Engineering | Comments Off on Medical Stuff

Business Models Continue to Fail on the Internet

Posted on September 26, 2001 by Pace Arko

The content here is free. However I get some of this content from other sources which have to pay for it somehow. Advertising, despite becoming more and more obnoxious in its presence, doesn’t seem to be able to cut it. Is this the end of free content on the Internet?

Posted in The Internet | Comments Off on Business Models Continue to Fail on the Internet

Who watches the watchmen?

Posted on September 26, 2001 by Pace Arko

A few years ago, a friend and I were talking about using the redundant bits in web images to store text messages. You could drop the image into binary/hex editor and see the message or something like that. We discussed it as a means to increase the accessibility of web images. Screen readers could see descriptive information inside images so treated. Anyway, considering recent events, some folks seriously considered this as a means for bad guys to communicate with each other. Their search for such hidden messages has so far turned up empty.

Speaking of security and the erosion of privacy and personal freedom through technological advance, Dr. Steve Mann, has been observing the observers for some time now. Basically he is a gargoyle. He wears a uniform filled with computer, telecommunications and recording gear and walks around recording, receiving and transmitting stuff. He finds it telling that the people who most object to be being observed in this manner are the ones who observe and record everyone else for security purposes, that is police, government offices, casinos, retail stores and so on.

Posted in Security and Privacy | Comments Off on Who watches the watchmen?

Teeth like Hotels on the Florida Coastline

Posted on September 18, 2001 by Pace Arko

I don’t know–in between work assignments and thinking about recent events for some odd reason Laurie Anderson appeared in my brain. I, being the pretentious geek that I was, listened to a lot of her stuff back in the early Eighties. I don’t know how that association works.

Posted in Music | Comments Off on Teeth like Hotels on the Florida Coastline

Even without medical nano–

Posted on September 17, 2001 by Pace Arko

Sandia National Labs have recently built a micromechanical device that can grip individual blood cells.

Posted in Science and Engineering | Comments Off on Even without medical nano–