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He read today's userfriendly?

Surely you're referencing this.

I was not trying to single you out; I just noticed yours first :)

As a birthday present I recently received a copy of Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a punctuation guide I found to be almost hysterically funny.

As engineers, programmers and other professionals that deal with the unforgiving literalism of computers and other modern technology, I am continually amazed at our inattentiveness to detial with regard to writing. Seems to me that we would pride ourselves on thoughtful, well-written and precise language.

Then again, we also are the ones that come up with jewels like "PC Load Letter" and these other messages.

I may have mentioned this in a post many months in the distant past, but I once spoke to a headhunter who asked "do you have any database development experience such as X?" I spent a minute or so explaining that I had done X, Y, Z, and $foo in environments such as Access (yes, I know, I'm doing penance for that), SQL Server, and MySQL. Her response?

"Yes, but have you actually done any development?"

Reminds me of a webcomic (Userfriendly? dunno) I read once where one of the guys tells a headhunter that he knows Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, and the dude says "but you don't have any MS Office experience, do you? Hm, too bad, because we really need you to have that."

Give me User Friendly any day.

Why it's not a good idea to drop bombs on spammers.

Some would say there's already a psychological aspect to it.

Just threaten to bring out that oscilloscope.

Heheheh. Someone in UF described it as "C Shudder"

For anyone that hasn't read User Friendly, Erwin (the SGI Box in the comic) is an AI that the non-geek marketing guy Stef (the guy in the comic) is trying to seek revenge on for various reasons (read the archives to figure all that out).

Check out http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990823& mode=classic and the next several comics.

For anyone that hasn't read User Friendly, Erwin (the SGI Box in the comic) is an AI that the non-geek marketing guy Stef (the guy in the comic) is trying to seek revenge on for various reasons (read the archives to figure all that out).

Check out http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990823& mode=classic and the next several comics.

For anyone that hasn't read User Friendly, Erwin (the SGI Box in the comic) is an AI that the non-geek marketing guy Stef (the guy in the comic) is trying to seek revenge on for various reasons (read the archives to figure all that out).

Check out http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990823& mode=classic and the next several comics.

For anyone that hasn't read User Friendly, Erwin (the SGI Box in the comic) is an AI that the non-geek marketing guy Stef (the guy in the comic) is trying to seek revenge on for various reasons (read the archives to figure all that out).

Check out http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990823& mode=classic and the next several comics.

No, they found that out a couple weeks ago!

See http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040406 and http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040415.

See http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040406 and http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040415.

I think it was April 26th, 1999, or shortly after. My fiancée and I were discussing when we should get married. My sister had a wedding coming up as well and we didn't want our weddings to conflict. I was thinking about this User Friendly comic and said "Well, we can eliminate May 19th, or none of our friends will be there."

My fiancée responded, "Well, we could have it May 19th, if we had it at the theater. . . ."

Went down and asked the local Edwards theater manager if we could have the wedding May 19th in the lobby. He had to check with Mr. Edwards himself, but we got the ok. People were already in line outside the theater.

I called the state for what was required to officiate a wedding. They referred me to the Universal Life Church, which I found offered on-line ordination. So I instant messaged a friend of mine at work and he went and got his ordination real quick, printing his certificate out at work (I think it still hangs in his cubicle). He agreed to dress as Qui Gon Gin and quote Yoda in the ceremony ("Do, or do not. There is no try.")

A friend of mine volunteered his for his wife, a very talented seamstress, to make our costumes. We set out to find the assorted props and such that we would need to complete the experience. I picked up a toy Han Solo blaster from Toys 'R Us. It was made of orange plastic. I used a black magic marker to color it black, adding a few highlights and scuffs.

We camped out overnight the last day, night and day before tickets went on sale. My boss gave me time off since he knew it was for getting hitched and all. We bought tickets for the first show after 5pm on the 19th (although a lot of the guests went to the midnight one too), so the most people could attend.

Everyone was in costume. I was Han Solo, she was Princess Leia and Darth Vader gave her away, Chewbaka was my best man while Boba Fett looked on. Jedis, with their lightsabers drawn, lined the isle. The ceremony music from the end of Episode 4 filled the lobby for the wedding march, and after the wedding we played the original celebration music from the end of Episode 6.

Then the manager let us all go straight to the theater to get good seats for the movie. No standing in line outside necessary (which some people had been doing all week). We lined up outside the theater while they finished cleaning it up. My wife and I walked down the line of guests and shook their hands. A reverse wedding line is much more efficient then a traditional one.

I ran to use the restroom before the movie started, and I ran into a guy who saw I was dressed up and said Did you hear someone got married out in the lobby?

... (or as dramatic?) as Illiad's version..

reminds me a lot of this strip.

You're not alone.

Ooops, shoulda credited my friend LionsPhil with with part of that writing.

I know this will be seen as pedantic and off-topic, but I do feel some comment is in order? How is a price hike a tariff? Also, the RIAA isn't mentioned directly in the article. The RIAA has all the right in the world to raise the price. We also have the right to boycott it. Sorry, the tone of the article and parent post rubs me the wrong way.

[from the Slashdot summary] ...and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song.

At first, I was going to blame Slashdot for poor editing, but I realize the fault actually lies with the article. By definition, the word tariff usually implies fees imposed on a product(s) for profit by a government. Perhaps, it can be extended to corporations. It's a stretch, but I'll concede it's possibly a legitimate use of the term.

[from the article]
The pigopolists have barely got their feet under the table and already demanding more.

Pigopolists? Is that derived from pigopoly, pig monopoly, or pig oligarchy? Is this an editorial or some small child's blog?

Look, I don't expect the journalistic integrity of the New York Times (actually, I do, but that's a different story), but this kind of rhetoric clearly shows bias.

Just the facts, m'am.
Frankly, the facts would have stood on their own without the jab at the RIAA. This is a fault in geek rhetoric. I'm actually more sympathetic for the RIAA after such a slanted attack. The article doesn't mention the RIAA specifically. They do mention "five major record labels". Also, a link to the Wall Street Journal story would have been nice too.

People don't want to hear anti-Microsoft|SCO|RIAA diatribe. [Okay, maybe people like the anti-Microsoft diatribe.] They want to know why they should care. Let's stop with the useless mud-slinging and stick to the facts. The facts will defend themselves.

Just came to this one today, seems appropriate :)

In a manner of speaking (http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040408 )

Look no further for a new name for Lindows OS.

is this logo

:)

...if you were to install it on a marketing droid's computer

And this just to shows how little the EU anti-monopoly fine (and even less, the US antitrust) will affect MS. At $600mil, the fun for massive abuse of power is less than trademark/etc litigation.

I think that userfriendly got this one right.

I wonder though, what is MS's estimated assets. 2 billion seems a rather hefty amount even for them, and not something they'd just toss away without some advantage from it over alternatives (how long can you tie something up in court for $2B?)

I thought it was funny when Darl got beat over the head with a bat.

Now everyone who has a gameboy will have to pay Mr. Darl $699.

No. Apparently he's forgotten all about it...

It's bad enough that the rest of the Internet is also posting lame April-fools stories.

Oh, I don't know, that Google Lunar Complex was damn funny, as was UserFriendly and Thinkgeek's coverpage. Pay close attention to the geek points for each item on the front page:-D

where we're told what's funny. In that case, however, notification was needed. sorely needed.

beating up on Darl McBride

Playing quake on an abacus. User Friendly

2000 - MentalPlex
http://www.google.com/mentalplex/

2002 - PigeonRank
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

[shrug] It sounds like a Google AF joke to me, but it seems like it'd be a bad idea for Google to mock free e-mail when it would be a good idea for Google to get into that (even if it wasn't a gig worth of space). If it's a joke, then it's almost like they're saying, "Haha, free e-mail. Riiiiiiiiight."

As far as bandwidth and space are concerned, think about it... they have 4 billion web pages cached. How big's a web page? 4 KB? Not even including images, that's a lot of hard drive space. And bandwidth goes without saying.

Of course, they probably want attention. They got it. But Google gets attention for pretty much anything.

Or, you can apply for political asylum.
This is the 2000 version of the form though. It might have changed more recently.

It would be cool if I could retrieve the results of the POST so that I wouldn't have to either rewrite my sage words or decide to not bother (which is probably the better choice).

If you have a popular web comic strip, you could always post notices that the site was going to be taken down due to lawsuits from a major corporation. And for bonus points, you could get a geek.news site to go along with it...

wait a minute...

The world will never be the same

'nuff said

Well, we might not have clippy, but we have Vigor

... inspired by User Friendly

But I'll sooner go without a computer than pay them for a license to Linux, and I would rather avoid EvilOS (TM).

I suggest you try out MovieOS.

You mean this one?

Benefits of voice recognition:

Drawbacks:

The geeks at Opera must read UserFriendly...

Benefits of voice recognition:

Drawbacks:

The geeks at Opera must read UserFriendly...

Benefits of voice recognition:

Drawbacks:

The geeks at Opera must read UserFriendly...

Benefits of voice recognition:

Drawbacks:

The geeks at Opera must read UserFriendly...

I too use firefox to load up six different pages. Just scroll through to visit all my standard pages every morning:
Pooch Cafe Get Fuzzy Sluggy Freelance Megatokyo User Friendly Slashdot BYU
Then I usually go to cnn, nytimes, bbc, and deseret morning news for the second set of tabs. I love firefox

Actually, I found this to be amusing.

Someone linked to this on Groklaw a few days ago. Anyone who's played Steve Jackson's "Illuminati" will get a kick out of it: SCO/Illuminati