Not really worthy of the Fail Blog, here are a few that have caught my attention over the last few weeks:
Car Mart – YOUR instead of YOU’RE or YOU ARE:
A local NHS Hospital telling us about a “10 minute wait aprox”:
In keeping with my previous car parking fail, this BMW driver did what they do best:
Finally, PC World can’t decide whether this item is available for delivery or not:
Technorati Tags: fail
Readers who are sensitive to shocking content should stop reading now – the following screenshot contains text that might offend!
Over the weekend I wrote a blog entry about some of the “stuff” that I’ve found in the browser history/cache of the computers that I find myself being asked to “fix”. I find myself reminded of some text that I wrote on the subject of precisely how we find ourselves sucked into supporting the IT infrastructure of our friends, relatives, family and their friends…a scenario that doctors never find themselves presented with… Anyway, here’s the original browser history article: Browser history can help determine rebuild vs clean up, but can be revealing…
More recently, just last week to be more accurate, I was running CCleaner and Eraser over a desktop and a laptop. CCleaner is good at telling us precisely what it will remove; here’s an extract from the cookies collection that it found on the laptop:
I don’t really want to know what content I might expect from the sites that I’ve highlighted in red.
There’s little in the way of a real message in this blog entry, except to say that if you are going to ask your friend in IT to “fix” your computer (because “it’s running very slow”), think about the sites that you have been visiting before you hand it over. Personally I find admission is better than denial – tell me that I’ll find some shocking sites, tell me “it was my mate who stayed with us”, tell me anything, but the truth is always best!
Technorati Tags: CCleaner, Eraser, Heidi, DOD, DOD wipe, blame, honesty, blame your mate, it wasnae me, wasnae me
A recent Microsoft advert, brought to my attention by Colin, is somewhat odd, cool, weird, memorable, etc. Ian then replied to Colin with 1938media‘s response. I was going to prepare a video response to Loren’s video, however I decided to put it into writing instead (largely due to a noisy household, a shortage of production time and toothache).
**
Gates and Seinfeld spend their time inside a shoe store called Shoe Circus. This is an advert loaded with one-liners many of which have a deeper meaning. For example, in the opening scenes Seinfeld introduces viewers to the shop slogan “Quality shoes at discount prices – why pay more?” and the fact that Bill Gates is inside being fitted out for a pair of shoes. Viewers are free to read into this whatever they like, however the message is obvious: if Shoe Circus is good enough for Bill…then it’s good enough for the rest of us. The analogies with software should be obvious to viewers.
With Seinfeld taking over the role of shoe fitter, he asks Gates’ “is that your toe?” Gates’ response is nothing short of inspired, “no, it’s leather”. Of course it’s the leather that Seinfeld has just touched. Appearances can be deceptive, sheep can hide in a wolf’s clothing, Gates’ is being open and honest with the brevity of his response.
We learn that “the left one’s is a little tight”. Gates does not say much in this advert, this sentence is his longest. Viewers may find themselves feeling that Gates and Seinfeld are actually portraying McCain and Obama with this political reference. However, the opposite is actually true: there is no room for politics in global product development.
Viewers are invited to consider the statement “he’s a 10”. Seinfeld makes this point very clearly with little in the way of semantic fluff and verbal distraction. He is careful to repeat the statement “that’s a 10”. The point that he is making is also clear: there’s no 11 here, we don’t need to be one better than anybody else, we can be as good at 10. These three words have deep roots in the wise words of Spinal Tap whose amplifiers are better than the competition because they go one louder.
Outside the store, the Spanish-speaking family are not interested in Gates and Seinfeld, they are interested in the Conquistador, the shoe itself. This is a clear indication to the viewer that big brand names should not be the primary focus, it is the product that exhibits the quality and usability. Indeed, we can induce some meaning from the definition of conquistador – the explorer or adventurer – products do not develop themselves, exploration and risk are essential in order to move any product development forward.
We have already seen Seinfeld demonstrate the flexibility of the Conquistador, which sends home the a message that products should be flexible and able to meet all your demands, even if wearing leather shoes in the shower is one of your demands. Viewers may initially have thought that the shoe bending was a direct reference to Yuri Geller’s spoon bending activities of the 1970’s, however the producers very quickly put us off the scent with the vision of Seinfeld wearing his clothes and shoes whilst showering.
During the closing of the shoe purchase we learn that Gates has a platinum card for the store. The card itself has a picture of Gates that pre-dates 1980 (readers are invited to work out a more precise date for this photograph on their own). Of course the message that the producers are hoping to convey with this hark back to the late 1970’s is that of stability and the desire to produce quality products since day one. The irony of the loyalty card being called a Clown Club should not be missed – this is a laser-guided “direct hit” against anybody who believes that Microsoft cannot hit the mark with whatever they set their cross-hairs on.
The secondary message suggested by the Clown Club card infers that there are other folks in the club. One might think that members of the same club should play fair, as happens in traditional sporting clubs. Gates’ smirk as he announces that he is a platinum member suggests that other members of the same club may not be playing fair, although this is a statement that is never made directly. The Clown Club card itself rewards holders with Big Top points. These are probably worthless, however this is sending a clear message to the other club members that team work and playing fair are essential in today’s world, points do not always mean prizes. Scoring points against your opposition is not something club members should be entertaining.
During the penultimate message, as Gates and Seinfeld leave the store and the shopping mall, Seinfeld comments that Gates has “mind-melded his Magnum Jupiter brain to those other Saturn-ringed brains at Microsoft”. We see here yet another reference to the need for team work, the need for the creation of a global playing field, there is no room for a disconnected organisation. Gates short but subtle response, “I have”, drums this point home. A question left unanswered at this point is “where did Gates get his churro from?” The viewer is left to make up their own mind about the origin and meaning behind the introduction of this random and spurious churro.
The closing message sees Seinfeld, a clear thought leader in this field, ask Gates the ultimate question, a question that would normally result in the answer 42. Readers of this piece and viewers of the advert are invited not to panic at this point, as what follows is merely one interpretation of this particular message.
Seinfeld, as we have witnessed throughout the advert, plays the lead part with the most vocal content. However it is Gates’ with his “man of few words” responses that are the most emotive and carry with it more meaning than wordy sentences can come close to achieving. This is a hidden message: quality over quantity.
We may believe that there are take-aways in Seinfelds closing message: “I’m just wondering, are they ever gonna come out with make our computers moist and chewy like cake so we could just eat ”em while we’re working? If it’s yes, give me a signal, adjust your shorts.” Viewers are then either shocked or surprised to see Gates adjust his shorts (for the benefit of UK readers/viewers, we must imagine these to be boxer shorts, as worn under the trousers). Gates’ action allows the advert to close somewhat rapidly, leaving us with the message “The Future…Delicious” and the Windows logo.
The advert’s primary message is clear: Windows 7 will be a product oozing with quality, usablity, flexibity, style and it will integrate with the way you do things. Gates still is still associated with Microsoft, certainly in the eye of the viewing public, hence the choice to use him as part of this advert for future Microsoft products and hence this author’s direct reference to Windows 7.
This advert says so many things about the Microsoft product development process and their products, surely so much is obvious?
**
A YouTube version of the advert can be found here.
Links
Thomas Lee’s post on the same topic.
An alternative ending can be found here (provided here for reference, not endorsed)
The deal behind hiring Seinfeld
Technorati Tags: Gates, Seinfeld, Microsoft Advert, winvan
Like a lot of folks in the IT industry, whether you’re a software developer or in an infrastructure/support role, I seem to find myself sorting PCs and laptops after they’ve been infected with malware, spyware and/or viruses.
It’s something that I’ve written about elsewhere in this blog: Confidence Tricks and It’s a scam, it’s a hoax, but how do you know?
Sometimes the cause can be obvious, but asking the question “have you been looking at porn?” directly can be a little awkward and embarrassing.
On one such occasion a few years ago, I knew that the PC had been used to view skin tones and the like, however I chose to ask the question anyway. The response that I got back then was a resounding “no”. This wasn’t the first time that I’d recovered this particular PC from viral infections after visits to the skin toned side of the Internet…so I wasn’t at all surprised to find the sites presented in the image below in the browser’s history. Incidentally, this is a carefully positioned view of the history list – there were some real shockers elsewhere in this history.
I suppose it helps us to see this kind content in the history, at least we then know what we’re dealing with. If the history had been wiped, we may have wasted time trying to perform a clean up instead of a rebuild. My threshold for rebuild vs. clean up is getting a lot lower. If it can’t be cleaned up within 45-60 minutes, the unit is flattened, paved, formatted and the re-installation process starts.
A PC rebuild was the order of the day in this case.
Technorati Tags: browser history, virus removal, spyware removal, flatten, pave, format, viral infection
Monday
Here we are again, on a red-eye flight from Edinburgh to London. It has been a few weeks since my last trip. In that time I have made some improvements to a Visual Basic ASP.NET 1.1 application and added Monte Carlo risk simulations to and existing C# 2.0 application (it’s now up to .NET 3.5 thanks to gratuitous use of LINQ!)
I am in London for two days, Monday and Tuesday. Oddly, I am unsure of the learning outcomes or what we might achieve from these two days – we have a software vendor visiting, so I guess we should tap him for any knowledge that he can spare us…
My usual cabin bag has been replaced for this trip, largely because I am flying into London City as opposed to Heathrow. Flights to London City make use of Avroliner RJ85/RJ100 aircraft – the overhead bins can be a lot tighter/compact on these types of aircraft. So instead, I am carrying a rather aged Microsoft .NET rucksack (hint hint!) and a leather laptop bag. Don’t tell anyone, but it’s not my laptop bag – I am returning it to our London office on behalf of its real owner. However, before you report me to the authorities hear me out! As luck and flight cancellations would have it, the real owner is actually sitting a couple of seats away to my left! Oh, wait, the intent to carry on a bag that was given to me by somebody else was there:doh! Guilty, take me away, lock me up and throw away the key!
Interestingly, the last time I travelled through Edinburgh airport with this partiucular Microsoft .NET rucksuck (the dark blue ones given out at an MSDN Roadshow circa 2000), a chap (MSFT accounts/sales chappie) tapped me on the shoulder and asked in I worked for Microsoft…that was in 2003/2004. Amazingly, whilst at London City’s DLR station *the same bloke* asked me the same question! What are the chances of that happening? Anyway, small world.
Sacrificing the laptop bag doesn’t mean I’ve left my laptop at home. No sir! I use a Targus sleeve to protect the D830 when it’s in my usual Tumi backpack bag – I’ve brought the sleeve along for the return journey. So, all going to plan, I’ll be traveling home rather light…makes a change.
Arrived at London City airport with the usual bang of what feels like a heavy landing but is actually fairly common with these aircraft. Of course, it’s a case of land and get off the runway as quickly as possible at London City, such is the length of runway and size of airport. Expansion work must have taken place as we had to walk a lot further than usual – “baggage handlers al fresco” was further evidence of the ongoing works!
Getting into Marble Arch involved taking the DLR to Canning Town then on to Bond Street via the Jubilee line – both were packed to the gunnels/gunwales (or overcrowded as I prefer to call it).
Tuesday
The return flight home was at 2005, the late one. There are two advantages to this. Firstly, it means that I can get a full day in he office, leaving at the usual time to head out to the airport. Secondly, Heathrow is not so busy after 1830…most of the time…which makes for rapid transit through security to the lounge.
Sadly the flight was delayed by one hour. However the captain boarded us before we knew of the delay. This is a cunning approach that often works – the captain sent air traffic control the “ready” message which gave us a chance at an earlier slot. It paid off as the delay was reduce by 15 minutes. You know, I am beginning to think that BA are my only source of fatty fish oils omegas – I was going to write “sole source”, but I fear @garyshort might shoot me down for bad jokes! Not whilst in-flight at least! Oh, there’s another one, doh!)
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday after a couple of trips to the dentist, it became clear that 15 years of check-ups, cleans and polishing had come to an end. I appear to have a minor infection in one of my left lower molars – the treatment is remarkably similar were it a major infection. Treatments, appointments, pain, suffering and a large bill to follow. I am not looking forward to it – the first treatment was meant to be today, Friday, however due to equipment failure it has been postponed. They say that you can be sure of two things in life, death and taxes. I would extend that to include dental work, despite taking great care to avoid it. C’est la vie I guess.
On the positive side of things, there’s only a week to go until the new Metallica release Death Magnetic:
Technorati Tags: Tumi, dental, London City, rucksack, Microsoft, .NET, ASP.NET, C#, Metallica, Death Magnetic
Just yesterday one of my friends e-mailed me with a small Outlook 2007 font size problem. There is, it appears, no solution as yet. However, unrelated to his original question, I found this link that I knew would be of interest to him in his professional capacity.
I wasn’t all that surprised to hear that his firm block sites such as Twitter. It got me thinking: Twitter, for me and for many of the folks I follow and those who follow me, it’s all about the conversation. Of course for me it’s a software development conversation – at least for the vast majority of the time. Generally speaking, I would think that most employers would be keen on peer to peer conversations and learning opportunities.
The amount of non-work related conversation that I am exposed to whilst sat at my desk (both in Edinburgh and London) is huge and very much irrelevant. Are you interested in your colleague’s telephone conversations? Open plan environments must be nightmare for those folks who can’t use a telephone quietly. I endured overhearing a 20 minute call between the chap sitting at the opposite desk and his umbrella company – I know what his weekly shopping bill is, his weekly rent, credit card spending and his date of birth…and that’s what I can recall without thinking. I was trying to work whilst this conversation took place – however since it was so close and so loud, I was very much distracted. This was just one such distraction that caught up with me today – I know that I’m not alone – blocking out the periphery noise whilst you’re trying to work isn’t easy.
The couple of times a hour that I might want to check-in with my peers, find out what they’re up to, perhaps ask them a taxing work-related question, in some organisations I’m denied that privilege. Compare the level of conversation and usefulness of Twitter to the average office-based morning chatter, it soon becomes clear that employee productivity is thwarted by in-person social networking. Of course, I’m not saying that there is little value provided by in-person conversations, far from it. What I’m saying is the amount of “noise” generated overall isn’t good for productivity, yet little is ever done to address the lost time, the distraction, the interruptions and the stress that such scenarios can create. Instead, the more focused avenues, such as Twitter, are blocked.
In a nutshell
The content that I get from Twitter is far more tuned towards the work I do. Blanket bans are often the result of the few spoiling a good thing for the many.
Next time on Murphy’s Rant
Printing on both sides of the paper, an environmentalists dream or just a source of frustration?
Technorati Tags: rant, twitter, ban, blanket ban
Thanks to Colin (Stuff that’s in my head) and Barry (idunno.org) for tagging me in this meme. I’m only promoting it because it gives me a chance to document a little bit of my past…
How old were you when you started programming?
I suppose I was about 12, probably tinkering with a TRS-80 (in Tandy/RadioShack), an Acorn Electron, a ZX-81 and an Oric 1.
However it wasn’t until I was 14 when a BBC Micro (Model B) arrived complete with it’s User Guide. Those where the days when user guides were real user guides and … The User Guide itself was over an inch thick and was ring bound. The ring binding was perfect, you could lay it flat on a table and it would stay open, great for typing whilst reading. This is in complete contrast to the RISC OS 3 Programmer’s Reference Manuals that accompanied the Acorn Archimedes (more about this shortly). I learned everything there was to learn about the BBC, in some cases this meant getting very intimate with SHIELA, JIM and FRED – sometimes all at the same time (user guide page 421)!
Those were also the days of cassette-based storage. How slow were they? Very slow. Indeed, when I finally got a 5.25” disk drive, I spent a lot of time moving tape-based programs on to disk. Of course, some tape-based programs where fussy and insisted that they load and run from “PAGE &0E00”, whereas the disk control moved the base page to &1900. So I spent more time working out how to load programs into a different PAGE then magically move it to where it expected to be where it could then be executed from. The process of moving tape-based programs onto disk was something I became pretty good at.
How did you get started in programming?
I guess that I have my father to thank for this! When we were in Libya, he brought home fan-fold listing paper for me to use as scrap paper. Whilst a lot of it was ‘address listings’ and other such program output, some of it contained COBOL listings.
What was your first language?
That would be BBC Basic. I can’t remember how long it took me to master it. BBC Basic had the advantage of a built in assembler – anything that was a little bit slow in interpreted Basic could be hand-cranked using 6502 Assembler. They were the days – it was possible to learn how to understand the entire computer: it’s architecture, it’s hardware, it’s interfaces, you name it.
What was the first real program that you wrote?
I don’t know if I can remember the very first program that I wrote. I can remember writing a number of programs whilst at school. There was a network broadcast program that I called Channel 5 – obviously long before the TV station came along. Then there was my A-Level project, a program that created graphs – it had to manage data, graph plotting and printing: a tall order in those days.
Part of the graphing program involved sorting data. After the graph data had been loaded from file, I was using arrays to hold the data in memory. My sort routine involved looking at the first element of the array, then comparing its value with the second element – if the first was less than the second, I’d use a temporary variable to allow me to swap the array elements. I was, as you might imagine, very pleased with myself – this was a really cool sorting method! Of course, like many/all first-time programmers, I believed that I was the first person to “invent” this sorting technique. Oh how much I had to learn – it didn’t take long for the bubble [sic] to burst!
What languages have you used since you started programming?
ARM Assembly Language, Turbo C, Turbo C++, Turbo Pascal, ML, Perl, COBOL, Borland Pascal, Delphi, Visual Basic 6, Classic ASP (VB), PHP, Visual Basic (.net), C#.
What Was Your First Programming Gig?
Gig? I suppose by this it means where I was actually paid to write code. That would have been in 1990 when I spent a year working for IBM in Hursley, near Winchester. At the time I was an avid Turbo Pascal fan – my first boss was a Modula-2 dev-head, he loved it. I inherited a C language parser written in Modula-2. It was fun working on the parser…until I discovered that the recursive nature of the parsing process wasn’t controlled using local variables as it should be, but was controlled using global variables. I think this was close to my first “OMG, I don’t believe it” moments (I’ve had plenty more of those since then!)
If you knew then what you know now would you have started programming?
I think the short answer to this question would be yes, yes I would have started programming. However would I have chosen to learn assembler language? In today’s abstract world, with class libraries getting evermore feature rich, it seems that fewer folks truly understand today’s processors at an instruction set level. I wonder if there will be a shortage of assembly language developers in years to come?
If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers what would that be?
Keep it clean, keep your code clean. It’s difficult to teach “feeling” – when I’m writing code I often know very early on that I’m probably writing code that will be difficult to maintain – it’s at that point I stop and think about better (read: simpler) ways of achieving the same thing. In the same thought, I’d also recommend that you shouldn’t try and write perfect code the first time. Don’t be afraid to write code with refactoring in mind – there are plenty of good tools that will help get there!
What’s the most fun you’ve ever had … programming?
You might think I’m weird (or may be wired) however this is an honest answer! Back in about 1994 I was working in Newcastle as part of an Acorn Archimedes library development team. One of the application developers was about to go on holiday, he had been frantically getting his CD-ROM based application ready for production. Disaster struck, somehow he managed to delete his source directory (yes, backups, yada yada, I know…) Rather than let him cancel his holiday, I hauled his Acorn A5000 into my office space (thus I had two A5000s) and proceeded to recover as much of the source code as I could. I couldn’t get it all back, so in the two weeks that he was away, I filled in the blanks.
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture
http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/A300.html
Tag, you’re next: Richard Peat, David Christiansen, Ian Smith, Scott Lovegrove, Danny Thorpe
I have been adding functionality to one of my applications. Without going into huge amounts of detail, it’s a C# application that pushes data out to Microsoft Excel – end users like Excel! The functionality that I’m adding was prototyped inside Microsoft Excel using simulated data and…the Excel Analysis Toolpak. To cut a long story short, I really wanted to remove the reliance on the Toolpak. In fact, I really wanted as much of the control element pulled back into the C# application, i.e. I wanted Excel doing more presentation of data and less scripting.
Part of that functionality involved replicating a few of Excel’s statistical functions, most notably STDDEVP (more details here)
Of course, it’s very likely that there’s a .NET implementation available in the .NET Framework…however my brief search was inconclusive, so I set about writing my own. The code you see below will compile and run using Visual Studio 2005. If you are using Visual Studio 2008 you can take advantage of the built in Sum, Average and Count methods (e.g. total = n.Sum(); instead of the foreach…total+=num loop)
[C#, compiled and tested using Visual Studio 2005]
class Program
{
static public double STDDEVP(params double[] n)
{
double total = 0, average = 0;
foreach (double num in n)
{
total += num;
}
average = total / n.Length;
double runningTotal = 0;
foreach (double num in n)
{
runningTotal += ((num - average) * (num - average));
}
double calc = runningTotal / n.Length;
double standardDeviationP = Math.Sqrt(calc);
return standardDeviationP;
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
double s = STDDEVP(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7);
Console.WriteLine(s);
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
This worked for me – your mileage may vary.
Technorati Tags: C#, STDDEVP, .NET, standard deviation
Yes, I realise that what I am about to write here is perhaps taking my status as a geek too far….
Within the last 10-12 months, I noticed a handful of road engineers physically removing a motorway distance to destination sign. It was on the northbound M90 just after the Admiralty “Sky TV” junction. At that time, Aberdeen was 112 miles away.
I was a little surprised to see the replacement sign being installed about 5 feet in front of the existing 112 miles sign. I was surprised for two reasons. Firstly, there was nothing wrong with the existing sign – it was in perfect condition as far as I could tell. Secondly, the replacement sign had Aberdeen marked as being 115 miles away. I can’t imagine that Aberdeen (or Fife for that matter) had moved 3 miles further apart.
However, after the works had been completed I noticed that the sign didn’t read Aberdeen 115 as I expected it to – it read Aberdeen 117. So Aberdeen and Dunfermline were now magically 5 miles further apart. I’m sure this fact pleases some people, however I was more intrigued at how such a mistake can be made…either the original 112 was incorrect or the new 117 is…or both as the image below might confirm.
In reality, the Aberdeen 115 sign was located less than a half mile further south (back “down” towards Admiralty). Thus the first sign we see is Aberdeen 115, then a few seconds later, we see Aberdeen 117…even though we have driven “up” the motorway in a northerly direction.
Who does one report such “issues” to? I’m going to contact Transport Scotland to find out!
My dashboard earlier today:
You’ll just have to take my word for it that it was 8 seconds into the 8th minute 🙂
Anybody care to guess at the make (and model?) of the car that this dashboard belongs to?
Technorati Tags: eights
Without much hullabaloo, with stealth-like precision, a handful of ex-Google employees (and others) launched a rival search engine: Cuil – which, according the About page is the Irish word for knowledge (although there appears to be some dispute about what it actually means). Semantics aside, there is even debate over the pronunciation of Cuil – in a press release, its’ founders advise that it should be pronounced “cool”. I suppose they’re hoping that search enthusiasts will replace “Google it” with “Cuil it”?
Naturally I looked myself up using Cuil. I was pleased to see my own web-site appear first. However, what is that car doing there?
So then I looked for “craig murphy” tdd. The results were interesting. The results are shown in the image below. Firstly, I was pleasantly surprised to see Wikipedia at the top. I didn’t know that my article Improving Application Quality Using Test-Driven Development at Method & Tools had been referenced on Wikipedia (thanks to whoever is responsible!) Secondly, the images were, on the whole, reasonably relevant…based on the content – as the picture of the Youngsters at DDD2 demonstrates (more about this in a moment).
On the right-hand side of the image below, the developer.* link, who are those guys? I suspect they are part of the developer.* team on some sort of social outing, but the image is so small it’s unclear what’s going on. Refreshing the search results does sometimes lead to pictures of the book cover for Software Creativity, which is perhaps more appropriate.
However, whilst the images were useful, I did notice that some spurious entries were showing up. Take the result below as an example. It uses a photograph that I took (The Youngsters at DDD) and associates it with a URL linking here: http://www.webfetch.com/uk.wpro.rss/search/web/Craig The information at that URL is fairly general – whilst the information that is referenced by Cuil is there, you do have to hunt for it. But it’s not perfect: “Craig Atkinson UK based Artist / Illustrator. Hire me now damn it. CRAIG ATKINSON. fine art + illustration. available…” – this extra information has nothing to do with my search. Some work on the result filters may be required.
Of course, the photograph is on the Internet, although it’s not implicitly in the public domain, I guess that is inferred and assumed. However this just goes to demonstrate what can happen to your photographs. May be I should start to add watermarks and release some event photos under an attribution model of sorts? That last question was, of course, rhetoric. It’s still interesting to see that Cuil have found a means of associating textual content about me with photographic content produced by me.
Poor typists and the dyslexic fraternity may be disturbed to learn that misspelling Cuil could lead you to sites of disrepute, as the first entry on this Google search confirms: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=CULI.COM&meta=
At this early stage, I think that the folks behind Cuil have exhibited considerable guile with their claim to have indexed 3 times as many pages as the nearest competition (today, 30/07/2008 – Search 121,617,892,992 web pages). May be they have managed to index that many pages…I’m sure that I’m not alone in wanting to see the infrastructure required to handle the index and user demand.
Within hours of its launch, the publicity surrounding Cuil was frenzy-like: it was both slated and commended as something that will mature into worthy competition for other search engines. More the former than that latter, I might add.
Is it cool to exhibit such guile? No doubt time will tell.
Technorati Tags: Cuil, guile, search, search engine
An e-mail “did the rounds” at our client site last week. It was a 50k image that contained a scanned paragraph of text relating to some employment issue in Australia – clearly a very focused subject and one that should never really have made it on to a global e-mail. However, for some reason this image (a jpeg) was sent to many thousands of recipients globally…including the e-mail alias abc@def.com!
The original e-mail, including its 50k image attachment was 4MB in size, the first FW: e-mail in the screenshot below. As folks started to Reply All asking to be removed from the list, the size of the e-mail grew, reaching 6MB in the screenshot – I did see one that had reached 7MB. Each Reply All message included the original recipient list as text which added to the size. As time went by, hundreds of MB’s of e-mail hit mailboxes…slowing down the entire global network.
Even as IT staff issued warnings about Reply All, still people did it…it took the best part of 48 hours before the e-mails ceased and who knows how long to clean up the mailboxes. You can be sure that some of the mailboxes in the 000’s that were affected would be unattended in someway, so the legacy of the many 4MB e-mails will live on in the OST’s (perhaps PST’s too) and backup devices for a long time to come. A very costly e-mail…
Lesson learned from this: do not click on Reply All unless it is absolutely necessary. If you do find yourself in the position of having to use Reply All, do try and slim down the e-mail body, i.e. remove unnecessary content such as embedded e-mail addresses etc.
Technorati Tags: Reply All