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Get On, Clip In, Fall OffRandom bletherings of a dilletante cyclist. |
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Get On, Clip In, Fall OffRandom bletherings of a dilletante cyclist. |
Yes, it's another repeat today. This one comes from the dark ages of 1999, during the peak of the media-Infobahn-hysteria epidemic (oh yeah, and during some 'dot-com' thing) when it seemed that just about anyone who claimed to know about computers would be stuck in front of a TV camera and authority seemed to be based on the blackness of a pundit's T-shirt or the number of body piercings they had.
Things to say if you want to be a TV Computer Pundit
----------------------------------------------------
(or subspecies thereof, the "Media Internet Guru")
Want instant media stardom? Recognition? Fame? Easy money? Just go
around reading the lines below loudly in trendy cafes, wait until a
passing TV producer with five minutes to fill with the obligatory
Information Superbahn story buys you a drink and you're there. But
remember that the lines just won't do the trick by themselves - you
need to work on the image! So get yourself a really cool "Net Head" or
":-)" (or even "foo", if yo want to be cryptic) T-shirt to show you're
really part of the 'in' crowd, and remember, confidence! confidence!
You need to read your lines with utter conviction, or your authority
might be challenged by some smart-alec who thinks they know
better. Give them no quarter.
"The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a US Air Force
officer, in 1966 as part of a secret project to build a network that
would withstand a nuclear war"
"The Net was only used by US research scientists until the first ISP,
America Online, was founded."
"Most URLs - that's netspeak meaning "Universal Resource Location" begin
with 'http', or "Hyper-Terrific Transverse Protocol". This means that
it's a web page."
"It's important to follow etiquette, or what we dedicated surfers call
'netiquette' when communicating with people via the Internet. There are
lots of different smiley faces to help you do this and make sure you
don't offend anyone - be sure to learn them all! Here are a few to get
you started... this one means you're happy.. yes, Judy, just turn your
head sideways.. aren't they cute?.."
"Make sure you have an up to date virus checker, or you could get nasty
viruses like "Concept" which reformats your hard drive, via email - it's
a good idea to take note of any virus warnings you get sent and forward
them to all your on-line friends (or 'cyberpals', as we call them) to make
sure they know about it too. And no, Richard, don't share your floppies
with strangers, ha ha ha!"
"It's important to make sure you have your own domain name, as this can
make you look like a big important company like Microsoft on the net.
You can either register a domain in your own country, or use one of the
generic domains like .com, but these usually mean a company's American.
If you get a .net address, though, it will really show people you know
what you're talking about!"
"If you find the blazing 64kbps ("killer bits per system" - this is a
measure of how fast your operating system is) speed of ISDN too slow,
then the easiest solution in Europe is to call your ISP and ask for a
quote for a T1 line, which are the fastest generally available."
"All computers on the Internet communicate using a common protocol known
as HTTP."
"It's a good idea, if you often have problems, to get the 'root' password
from your ISP so you can fix it yourself the next time. They should be
happy to let you know it if you just ring the support line and explain."
"If in doubt, or you have problems, and you want to avoid expensive Microsoft
support charges, just call your local university - they all have their
resident Windows guru who'll generally be only too happy to help."
"Usenet, or 'IRC', as it's often called, is like a huge web-based chatroom.
You can log on to it through Netscape or AOL."
"There are lots of ways to make your web pages more interesting, but make
sure that they can be read with both web browsers, Netscape and Internet
Explorer, under all versions of Windows. That makes sure that everyone on
the Internet will be able to read your pages without problems."
"Your computer needs to have TCP/IP installed. This is a two part protocol
that allows your computer to talk to others on the Internet - IP is the
Information Protocol, which interfaces to your web browser, and TCP is the
Technical Communication Protocol which interfaces to your modem."
"There's a lot of material that isn't suitable for children out on the
Net, so if your children surf a lot by themselves it might be a good idea
to get a net nanny package that stops them viewing adult content.
Alternatively, call your ISP and tell them to block access to sites you
think aren't suitable."
v1.0, 19990407
After the heaviness and rantiness of that last entry here, I thought I'd wheel out something a little more light-hearted and start an experiment I thought of a while ago - repeats! These are repostings of stuff I wrote loooong ago (in Internet time anyway, which means that some of them might date back as far as 1992 or thereabouts, which as anyone will tell you is before the Internet was invented. They also make for almost no mental effort on my part other than that needed to pick them out of the archive and paste them into a box. Most of them have been languishing in archives for a long time, and reading some of them back I get the feeling they deserve another outing. There's also a lot of total garbage in the archives, but I won't be reposting that.
Today's entry is from the heady days of 1999, and was written as a response to a Usenet article which seemed to meander off the point a bit - it's a stream of consciousness, and is partially explained by the fact that I was reading Ulysses at the time.