Entries from April 2006 ↓

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Technobilge - Part III (The Proof) v2.01

Coming from Australia is Michael Bloch who has this to say:

It seems that many of the new words introduced into the English language as a direct result of new technology and the commercialization of the Internet have made their way into web marketing… unfortunately. This phenomenon isn’t just occurring between programmers and web marketers but in the way that they carry out promotion of their clients and companies to others.
Here’s a slightly exaggerated example, altered to prevent a law suit being taken out against me..:
“through an inverted dynamic and proactive CRM process, we are a best of breed online company - a goal-directed, innovative digital firm which fast tracks cyber stickiness through turnkey solutions that guarantee targeted eyeballs using multiple streaming channels and viral e-services, providing the best ROI on your investment”
huh? Translation:
We are good and we know how to assemble impressive words into a paragraph that serves to inflate our own egos and of other pretentious clients while alienating everyone else. Oh yeah, did we mention that we can send you visitors who would be interested in your web site, real cheap?

This mind-numbing technobilge still prevails on thousands of websites and in brochures. I have begun recently to think that use of such claptrap could related to some form of insecurity or nervousness. This is another topic to investigate. Meanwhile the search for examples continues.

……..to be continued

URBAN TRASH cartoon by Jeremy Nell

Barclays & Phish Scam

You would think that the idiots or criminals behind the Barclays Bank ‘Need your Details’ scam would have sussed it that everyone they send their spam to is like, very well aware of them and their criminal intentions!

You’d think there’d be more hot air coming out of the Barclays people to denounce these criminals. But no, wait isn’t this an ideal marketing opportunity to sell a discounted Virus Software package online? And it’s tough if one or a thousand of our clients fall for the spam scam and get their accounts cleared out - we’re OK we’re insured!

This is what Barclays say on their website:

You may well receive emails that look like they’ve come from Barclays and ask you to disclose all of your security information.

Don’t: These are probably from criminals looking to steal your money.

We will never ask you to disclose all your personal or security details by email. The most we ask from you when you log-in is your five-digit passcode and two letters from your memorable word.

The people responsible for these ‘phishing’ emails send the same message to as many email addresses as they can find. They do not know your personal security details but the aim of the email is to get them.

That’s why, where we can we’ll include some more information about you on any emails we send like your name and the name or number of your home.

Have a look at our guide to a scam email to be able to determine whether you’ve been sent a ‘phishing’ email.

Usually these emails will direct you to a site that will ask you to “update” or “verify” your details. Never give these details away. Do not respond to the email or visit any website linked from it. Be warned - these can appear to be genuine.

If you’ve received a scam email, please forward it on to internetsecurity@barclays.co.uk. We won’t be able to reply individually but we do investigate every email to ensure that any fake sites are closed down as quickly as possible.

If you think your account has been accessed, visit our victim of fraud page.

Follow the advice in stay safe online.

Now this is all well and good but ever the bank to rip us off with exhorbitant charges and fees, they don’t miss a beat. I think it is insensitive and moneygrubbing of Barclays to have placed so perfectly alongside the above so that you cannot ignore it the following cheapshot sales pitch!:

Protect your computer with the latest anti-virus software:

Exclusive discounts on anti-virus software

Order broadband and get up to £30 cashback

Verified by VISA - additional security when shopping online.

Go take a look at it yourself here

PS: In the time it took me to draft this post, I received 4 more Barclays phishing trips! Annoying but thanks no thanks, I won’t take Barclays up on their discounted antivirus software.

Look out for UberGuru Boulevard Meltdown

Keep a look out for my upcoming feature about the gold paved UberGuru Boulevard.
It is silly, unstructured, based on self indulgent opinions, inflammatory (maybe), contentious. It will also be pointedly critical. It’ll make the skin on your teeth itch. It’ll make you cringe.

In my article, I ask if the ‘right time, right place’ factor unwittingly swept individuals into blogging guru status. Do they deserve the accolades or are they simply marketing mavericks spinning out their self-promotion and embedding their own brand on us all based on hollow principles, processes and a technobilge language we do not relate to?

Finally, how many gurus can you take? Is the Uberguru Boulevard tailgated and jampacked or is there still room for more? Or has the genre peaked and is that great big blogging guru tree about to receive the shaking of it’s life to let the unfit guru apples fall away?

It won’t be fun!

Another S African Wine label

This label was created specifically for the Paddagang restuarant in Tulbagh to celebrate a visit by the great tenor to the Cape Town.

Courtesy of Peter May’s Unusual Wine Labels

Outrageous S African Wine Bottle Labels

South Africa produces great wines but I can’t see any labels for the bottles that rush off the bottle and grab your attention. They all seem to have fallen into a similar genre.

So I thought you’d like to see a couple of labels that made conversation at the dinner tables a lot more interesting and for those that wanted to be quiet and enjoy the wine in silent contemplation - they had these labels to keep their attention ticking merrily along:

Now this label is brilliant. It explains an African legend about how the Boabab tree got to be upside down in the earth. Brilliant!

The next label is named after Spatz Sperling heard someone comment that the wine “tasted like shit”. He carried on working and made sure the wine he produced was not. But he called the vintage ‘Spatzendreck’ which if you translate it into German, means “Sparrow Shit”! And you can see a little sparrow doing it’s business at the top of the label.

Courtesy of Peter May’s Unusual Wine Labels

Technobilge - Part III (The Proof Part I)

This article proves to me that manipulation of words into meaningless soundbites creates pointless conversation. Do all marketers, IT tekkies and finance management use acronyms and meaningless words to simply try to impress or deliberately confuse the audience?
Read this and see what can happen. You could be a victim of a nonsensical conversation next!

How gibberish put scientists to shame

PAGES of computer-generated gibberish, containing such gems as “contrarily, the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea”, have been accepted as an academic paper at a scientific conference in the United States in a victory for hoaxers.
Convinced that many scientific conferences would accept almost any research for the right fee, three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology celebrated yesterday the submission of their gobbledegook masterpiece, Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy.

Jeremy Stribling, one of the students, said that he and two graduates were convinced that many academic conferences had few or no minimum standards because their sole purpose was to make money. “We decided to test the limits,” he said.

They wrote a computer program to generate nonsensical research papers, complete with “context-free grammar”, charts and diagrams. The program randomly selects and assembles sentences, then drops in impressive-sounding verbs and nouns. “Many scholars would agree that, had it not been for active networks, the simulation of Lamport clocks might never have occurred,” the paper asserts in its introduction.

“Certainly, the usual methods for the emulation of Smalltalk that paved the way for the investigation of rasterization do not apply in this area.” The students submitted Rooter, and a second paper, to the ninth World Multi-Conference on Systematics, Cybernetics and Informatics.

Mr Stribling said that they targeted the conference because it is notorious for sending e-mails to solicit admissions. An accepted paper usually attracts a fee. Nagib Callaos, a conference organiser, said that the paper was taken on a “non-reviewed” basis — meaning that there had been no feedback .

The students have raised more than $2,000 (£1,060) over the internet so they can attend the conference and give, as Mr Stribling said, “a completely randomly generated talk, delivered entirely with a straight face”.

An exercise in academic deceit

We ran four novel experiments:

(1) we dogfooded our method on our own desktop machines, paying particular attention to USB key throughput

(2) we compared throughput on the Microsoft Windows Longhorn, Ultrix and Microsoft Windows 2000 operating systems

(3) we deployed 64 PDP 11s across the Internet network, and tested our Byzantine fault tolerance accordingly and

(4) we ran 18 trials with a simulated WHOIS workload, and compared results to our courseware simulation

From Tim Reid in Washington

Read the report in full here at iScatterlings page called ROOTER

Shoes Off to Space

Ever since I first saw a satellite or spacecraft hurtling across a clear cloudless blue Namib desert sky from horizon to horizon, I have been hooked on all things to do with space exploration.

Therefore, it really pleased me to learn earlier today that one of my space heroes, Yuri Gagarin, became the first human in space because he displayed respect and had the good grace to remove his shoes before he climbed into a prototype of his Vostok capsule.

Isn’t this an incredible factoid? Out of all the 5 other well qualified prospective cosmonauts available to go on the historic flight, he landed the gig because he took his shoes off.

Please go read the full story here

Technobilge Part II v2.47i

Remind me who said that it is not what you say but the way that you say it that is important. Bottom line for any conversation is the ability to not confuse the listener through use of what I call ‘clique slang’ (used by a select usergroup who prohibit admittance to their clique by ‘unsuitables’), or slick newly invented termininologies. You will know that the acronyms you use will not translate into Latin or Swahili and neither will the marketing terminology we take for granted.

My rant is born of frustration at the ‘assumptions’ our experts have that the person(s) to whom they are engaging in conversation, can comprehend every word, acronym and technobilge being spoken.

And speaking of assumptions, here in my opinion, is one of the world’s greatest and it pisses me off everyday!:

In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft engineers assumed that all owners of a desktop or laptop would need certain programmes whenever we fire up the computer. So, everyday when I push the green button to start my computer, (WARNING:exaggeration coming), I must go take a shower or make coffee while Windows automatically preloads hundreds of programmes just in case I’ll need them. Wrong!

I want my PC’s processing power running at maximum please. And also, choice is something Bill, Steve and Ozzie forget is still a prerequisite of consumerism. I want to choose and select when I open whatever application I require and leave it open and ready for me to use when and if I want. Why should some spotty engineer in Seattle assume I need x,y and z and screw up with the PC’s ability to function at the levels I bought the darned thing for?

….meanwhile back at the thread:

So if we can get rid of the ‘assumptions’ then the conversations we have will stand a better chance to leave more people better informed and happier for the chance to have learned something without continually reaching for a technical manual, textbook, dictionary or asking for explaination.

Next time you have to deliver a speech or do a corporate presentation, remember me, your arch cynic just waiting in the audience to cry Bingo! if I get a full suite of acronyms and technobilge I do not understand. I want you to captivate me in a conversation. I want you to leave your audience spellbound, and enriched and happier in their comprehension and understanding of the topic or results you present than they were before you spoke. Like Lionel Ritchie’s hit about Sunday mornings. Be smooth, simple, soft, cool and easy. If you are presenting poor quarterly results, please leave the audience motivated at the end to go and improve performances. Don’t leave them looking for the closest razorblade outlet.

Your presence and the words you use will determine the outcome of the audience reaction to your conversation content. I want to be able to stand and listen to YOU all day and still feel enlightened,motivated and refreshed at the end.

All participants in conversation must learn that unless they are captivating and easy to understand, whatever they deliver will bomb.

FINI To be continued….

Technobilge - The Collection

I will be doing a lot of web browsing from today to find those gems of conversations where the content might as well have been written in Klingon.

If you find or have a couple of your own ‘bombs’ hidden in your closet, be brave and send them to me for the collection. I won’t laugh much. Promise! Heehee

Love you too
Rob

Soweto Gospel Choir UK Tour

April 30 London Cadogan Hall 0207 730 4500 www.cadoganhall.com
May 2 Nottingham Royal Concert Hall 0115 989 5555 www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk
May 4 Cambridge Corn Exchange 01223 357851 www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk
May 5&6 Malvern Forum Theatre 0168 489 2277 www.malvern-theatres.co.uk
May 8 Aberdeen Music Hall 01224 641122 www.malvern-theatres.co.uk
May 9 Glasgow Royal Concert Hall 0141 353 8000 www.grch.com
May 11 Leeds Town Hall 0113 224 3801
May 12 Northampton The Deco 01604 602787 www.thedeco.co.uk
May 13 Newbury Newbury Spring Festival 01635 522733 www.newburyspringfestival.org.uk
May 14 Coventry Warwick Arts Centre 024 7652 4524 www.warwickartscentre.co.uk
May 15 Darlington Darlington Civic Theatre 01325 486555 www.darlingtonarts.co.uk
May 16 Derby The Assembly Rooms 01332 255 800 www.assemblyrooms-derby.co.uk
May 17 Crawley The Hawth 01293 553636 www.hawth.co.uk
May 18 Croydon Fairfields Halls 0208 688 9291 www.fairfield.co.uk
May 20 St Albans Alban Arena 01727 844488 www.alban-arena.co.uk
May 21 Cheltenham Everyman Theatre 01242 572573 www.everymantheatre.org.uk
May 22 Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre 0870 111 3000 www.bic.co.uk
May 23 Tunbridge Wells Assembly Hall Theatre 01892 530613 / 532072 www.assemblyhalltheatre.co.uk
May 24 Torquay Princess Theatre 08702 4141 20 www.getlive.co.uk/torquay
May 25 Stoke on Trent Victoria Hall 0870 060 6649 www.victoria-hall.info
May 27 Cardiff St. David’s Hall 029 20878444 www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk
May 28 Salford The Lowry 0870 787 5790 www.thelowry.com
May 30 Swansea Grand Theatre 01792 475715 www.swanseagrandtheatre.co.uk
May 31 Liecester De Montfort Hall 0116 233 3111 www.demontforthall.co.uk
June 1 Plymouth Plymouth Pavilions 01752 229922 www.plymouthpavilions.com
June 2 Salisbury Salisbury International Arts Festival 01722 320 333 www.salisburyfestival.co.uk

By Peter Biles
BBC News, Johannesburg

A white South African farmer whose land had been earmarked for the first commercial expropriation has reached a sales agreement with the government.
The authorities want to transfer 30% of commercial farmland to black ownership by 2014, but progress has been slow.

The case of Hannes Visser’s farm has been seen as a test of the government’s determination to speed up the delicate process of land reform.

More details here

Technobilge Part II v2.45a

What does this mean?:

Deep, opulent orange hue. A nose of caramel, pastry, spiced oranges and apples. There is certainly some botrytis here, both colour and nose confirming this. The palate has quite a savoury structure to it, with firm acidity cutting through the mouthfeel. But there is plenty of flavour too, of burnt toast, stewed apples, caramel and honey. Takes on a greater sweet intensity with time in the glass, and has a good length. More reminiscent of Tokaji than anything else. Just scrapes very good

Where do these okies come from? It describes how savoury a palate is. Sis! Who wants to eat a palate? Ag puke man! In which country are palates considered a delicacy? This is a wine being described for crissakes. Check, it’s nogal got a ‘mouthfeel’ en jislaaik it ’scrapes very good’!

So is it me or is there a disconnect somewhere that I seem to have missed or is there a special school where you are taught to write viticultural technobilge like the above?

Dear World.

What is going on at your place? I hear that UK has the highest incidence of child asthmatics globally since records on asthma began. This is absurd. Why is it so?

I can tell why I think it is so but you must promise me that if you think I am right, you will convince Mr Blair and his devout Trotskiest accolyte Mr Brown, to buy rowing boats (sculls, fours and eights) for schools. If you think I am wrong, you will not dissuade them to abandon my request. Deal?

MY DUO THEORIED THEORY ON WHY UK HAS AN UNESSESSARILY HIGH CHILD ASTHMATIC RATE:

1. The Sun newspaper.

It should be banned, outlawed, burnt, dispatched to Neptune and stopped. It does not create the requirement nor cause any reader to use his or her imagination or other parts of their brain. Men will disagree with this but I must remind them that the topless beauty on page 3 of The Sun does not, I repeat, does not cause your brain to fuction unless your brain is located in your cock. OK, so it is and this goes for all us males so less of this and let’s move swiftly on. Thus it dumbs down its readership and as it claims to be read on a daily basis by the highest number of UK citizens you can imagine the collective impact of the dumbingdown on parents. They become collective idiots. What do collective idiots do? They believe Politically Correct idiots who say that sport is bad for their children.

2. Political Correctness as a way of life.

PC must be immediately banned. World, we cannot continue this way. How can we live our lives in constant fear of upsetting someone? Back in the good old Neanderthal days they did not have any PC Councils monitoring which caveman did not comply. Or should that be ‘male grottodweller’? They just got on with life and hey presto they survived and evolved into dumbdowned Sun reading idiots.

In those days life was called survival of the fittest. Nowadays life is called:

a) watching Big Bruvver on telly all day
b) hero worshipping ‘Posh n Becks’
c) ’scrounging social benefits off the state’
d) ‘football fucking football’
e) innit
f) wotevva
g) skiving off work to go do benefit fraud
h) and criminally, ZERO CONTACT SPORT AT SCHOOL (excludes knifing, steelpipe clubbing, pistol whipping and gang rape behind the cycle shed)

There you have it. My two theories on why the children of today in UK could be the world’s largest group of child asthmatics. And if you think the list above is all emcompassing, you will be wrong. The list is a lot, lot, lot, lot, ever such a lot, lot longer

In short I do believe that not having any contact sport or ’sport ‘ per se at school during the formative years when their bodies and muscles are in a rapid growth phase, is a considerable contributing factor to such high asthmatic incidence. You will all probably cry - it’s not lack of sport or exercise mate, it all ‘cos of them allergies innit, you jerk. Well yes being allergic to stuff is an increasing contributor to being asthamtic and to the statistics but why? Lack of exercise is why - you sofa hugging pillocks.

Sofas collect dust, cat and dog hairs, biscuit crumbs, £1 and 5p pieces that have been in someone’s hands who has flu or the bubonic plague, bits of half chewed Burger King hamburger meat, lost used condoms, dried spittle, stale fart chemicals and any other assortment of bits n pieces that carry mites and can pass on allergic reactions.

So switch off the TV, get your wide flabby butt up off the sofa where you are collecting contaminents that’ll make you sick and go do something useful to society like get a job, or do something constructive to improve your health and global outlook like a 5 mile walk in the countryside and see wildlife like birds or cows in realtime action. Or better still, go for a run around your town without stopping off at the pub for a few beers paid for out of the dole money me and others are paying for from the tax out of our hard earned money.

I was a chronic asthmatic and was lucky to be at a school that believed in sport for their students. Apart from the resultant benefit of fitness, it increased our self-esteem and confidence levels and most importantly sport taught us to be competative and to a degree self-reliant. All this prepared us better for the big world that awaited us after A levels or University.

While there are many schools who do encourage (here I go being PC again), sod it, force their students to do sports, there are in my opinion more schools who actively discourage sports at school. Selling off the school’s sportsfields does count as active discouragement of all sporting activity doesn’t it? Yes I think it does. Very bloody much so. Can you believe it? Schools in UK sell off their sportsfields to housing developers!!! How criminal and insane is that?!

In fact there are also thousands of mums and dads who can’t be arsed to ensure their children attend school! This speaks volumes to me about the teachers and governing bodies at these schools. Weak, feeble indecisive wimps with phsycological problems. Maybe they have not yet got over being bullied at school, having their plaits pulled by female 4th formers or from being crushed in a rugby scrum. If you are one these types - sod off and go read The Sun and do a soduko for sport!

Anyway - back to me and my asthma. Luckily for me I was ‘volunteered’ to join an ‘experimental’ rowing squad. I protested and declared myself incapable of succeeding at such a demanding sport.

“Oh what a load of rowlocks!”, came the answer from the understanding & empathetic rowing coach, “I’ll cure your asthma in 3 months”.

“What has Frank Zappa gotta do with curing my azzma?”, I thought to myself.

“Guaranteed?” I demanded

“Absolutely” replied the rowing coach

And so that is how the next Wednesday afternoon during our PE lesson I walked to the rowing club and became a learner sculler. I learned fast and seemed rather adept at the sport. IMPORTANT: I kept my Ventolin spray under my seat and if an asthma attack came while I was rowing bow in a four, I’d carry on rowing one-handed, (can’t let the rest of the crew down or cause them to crab), then time the stroke to reach under my seat with my other arm at the appropriate outreach, grab the spray, have a toke on it, drop it and then pick up the stroke again.

It was difficult. It was challenging. I prevailed and stuck to the objective of becoming a good rower and also to beat the asthma. I was focussed. I won because I wanted to win. There was a lot of fun and pain on the way but overall, there was plenty more fun. Thus did I become an adequate rower and I and others from the squad went on rowing after school and college. Our collective competative results were somewhat spectacular.

And as the coach predicted, and I wanted, I have never had an asthma attack again to date. I last used my Ventolin spray nearly 3 months to the day I first very nervously and gingerly climbed into a scull on that drab and damp Wednesday afternoon.

So you can now see why I want Mr Blair and that other one taking up space and stealing my air at Number 11 Downing St to buy rowing boats for schools. While they are at it, they can create artificial lakes like at Eton for the children who do not have rivers closeby to go train on. I also urge all parents with asthmatic children to get that kid rowing ASAP. Swimming is an excellent exercise for asthmatics too

The cure for asthma is in the exercise and most importantly, the desire and determination to be cured must prevail always.

OK World, I must sign off now. Pass on my regards to the schools genius governing bodies who sold off the sporting fields and so prevent UK from developing future Olympians. They have really done asthmatic kids and the future of British sport such a wonderful favour.

Regards

Rob

Technobilge Part II v2.43

We all need to enter conversations everyday and we will all have our own reasons to want to do so. But we can only all comprehend what each other is saying if we do not confuse the listener by introducing our keen razor sharp on the button latest tekkiespeak into the conversation.

What I mean is - does ‘VHSDR’, DSL’ ‘Web 2.0′ or ‘Media 2.0′ translate into Xhosa, Zulu, Venda or Latin?

I recall being completely paralysed by a conversation with a telcoms engineer back in the 90’s. I did not understand a word he was saying (OK, I got the ‘it’s’, ‘the’, ‘and’ bits), but I was too petrified and shellshocked by the bombardment of the PHD Masters Buck Rogers Rocket Science with Einstein theory chucked in for extra added flavour spiel, to ask for an explanation!

I just ummed and aahhed and nodded my head in agreement (that I should not have nodded did not occur to me but his facial expression did impart I should have shook my head to mean ‘no’) and let him vent for 10 minutes. Hey, he was on a roll and who was I to prevent him spewing forth? Imagine Billy Crystal on speed hosting the Oscars ceremony and reciting the Dummies Guide How to Build a Saturn IV rocket without pause. Would the assembled audience of actors and actresses know what he was saying?

Before I forget, is there an Inner Chamber of the planet’s top scientists, engineers and marketers sitting in session each day to invent new acronyms? If not, then the world’s industries are populated with seriously disfunctional tekkies! Who comes up with this stuff? Do product designers and inventors spend their day inventing things just so they can come up with and win the Cool Acronym of the Month Award?

Please don’t spoil my allusion ;0)