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What previous generation, when it wondered about the derivation of the term ‘Scotch Tape’ could so easily have found a wealth of information on it at the press of several buttons?

According to a reputable online etymological dictionary,

Scotch Tape was said to be so called because at first it had adhesive only on the edges (to make it easier to remove as a masking tape in car paint jobs), which was interpreted as a sign of cheapness on the part of the manufacturers.

(The assumed premise being the Scots’ well-known excessive thrift.)

What a fine example of the Internet’s primary use according to marketers accross the world; information. Now I’ve no wish to denegrate some of the excellent informational stuff that goes on online, nor its aptitude for collaboration in information-based projects, but it’s the collaboration, not the info. that makes the ‘Net worthwhile. To traduce Rushkoff, ‘information’ as it is often talked about, is simply an attempt to find a commodity in the ‘Net, and thus adapt it more easily to business models.

What’s really interesting about being online is that you can insult some dickhead in Iowa on IRC; trade porn with a Hentai addict in Greenland; swap music files with folks from all over the globe; perv on a newbie who has left their webcam on, and a security hole unpatched in Paris. Its the people at the other end, in other words.

As a computer-geek, I get off on the technology involved here, but what actually makes any of it worth a damn is that there are people sitting in front of those CRTs creating the content. Yeah, Sturgeon’s law applies; 98% of it all is crud, but I’d still rather have the option to read the inanities of millions of other folk than not.

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Microzeitgeist - When a topic, concept or piece of multimedia trivia becomes popular amongst your social group so that you get several copies of the same joke email, or simultaneously receive the same piece of news from several sites. This happens increasingly as the channels and networks through which we receive media become customisable to a narrower focus.
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The Sudoku craze may be over sooner than expected, say statisticians.

Tenerife, Spain: Number-puzzlers the world over will be deeply concerned by a paper given a recent conference on Applied Mathematics which suggested that the number of viable Sudoku puzzles was both finite, and rapidly approaching exhaustion. Scientists suggest that the fantastic popularity of the much-loved number squares, combined with the demand for squares of ever greater difficulty, meant that the Sudoku movement could grind to a hlat as soon as 2008.

‘The central issue,’ said one speaker, ‘is that regular Sudoku users demand puzzles of increasing complexity and quality. There are an almost infinite number of low-grade puzzles which admit of many solutions-but the fans, to say nothing of genuine addicts, are satisfied only by the most superior squares. And these are becoming difficult to calculate.’

The puzzles will theoretically be available, say scientists, but the enormous computer power required to generate them will mean that, on cost-benefit grounds, the puzzles will be inaccessible; scientists have called this point, at which puzzle generation becomes unprofitable, Humbert’s Peak.

Attempts to ameliorate the problem by turning to Sudoku variants such as Samurai Sudoku, Heptomino or Nonomino, have no guarantee of success-test puzzle audiences typically reject these Sudoku mutations. Riots and mass panics are imminent, suggest authorities.

‘We’ve scanned all the options, and eliminated less viable candidates. The pickings are thin,’ says a confidential government source. ‘Our real concern is that, with the puzzle-obsessed public unable to satisfy their addiction to bread and circuses, they may quickly realise that they have nothing to lose but their chains.’

It seems that, for Sudoku, there really is only one solution-revolution.

- Written by Rabbit Zero (with Reuters, AAP).

I had spent all of the other day busily cooking foodstuffs for a party, and of course noting all of the many things that I had overlooked.

I headed off to the supermarket and was wandering around looking for bottled lemon juice (for tabouleh). Anyhow, I had spent some time searching … I remember reading an SF story years ago about a woman trapped in a shopping centre from which there is no escape-full of inmates who are encouraged to “spend! spend! spend!” on credit. Every so often I think to myself, “Perhaps it’s finally come true-I am that woman, this is that supermarket, etc. Could this innocent bottle of juice be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?”

I eventually found the lemon juice (it was near the soy sauce), but realised that the whole experience could have been much easier if there was an effete aisle. Here would be found all the fancy food porn items one could dream of:

• genuine buffalo mozzarella;
• different olive oils for people who know the difference between ‘extra virgin’ and ‘plain old virgin’;
• saffron;
• pine nuts …

And so on. Not that a bottle of lemon juice in a squeezy bottle is really all that fancy … but I would do a lot of shopping from such an aisle.

I know I could just find these things by looking harder (but I’m lazy), and I know that there are speciality stores (David Jones’ Food Hall leaps to mind)- but there is little chance that any such speciality stores will open in the suburb where I live. Still, I hear that my suburb is on the up: new office buildings, gyms, three-wheeler pram families, overcapitalisation on every block.

Hope springs eternal.

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Data Archeologist: One who specialises in the recovery and analysis of data either from obsolete storage whose characteristics are no longer readily known, or simply winnows said data out from amongs the terrabytes of crap that you have sitting in those ‘misc’, ’stuff’ or ‘crap’ directories.  Just the man to call when you can’t find those digital camera pics amongst all the other ones that you foolishly allowed your crappy camera software to lump in one place under useless folder names.

Interface Analyst: One who develops complex psychological profiles based on the placement and arrangement of various user-editable interfaces, and ’skinnable’ software.  (e.g. failure to disable that fucking paperclip probably a hallmark of cretinism).

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