The Real Dr. Seuss Impersonator

I recently received a cool poem in my e-mail that rhymed and carried a rhythm well. It was entitled "Why Computers Crash" and was attributed to Dr Seuss.

I've been an admirer of the works of Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka Dr Seuss) since I was a kid. One of my favourite books during my childhood was called "I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew" which was about a guy who went looking for a place to escape his troubles and went off to search out Solla Sollew "...where they never have troubles, at least very few...". It was such a popular book in our family that when we bought a farm in 1981 and ran the place on solar panels we called the property "Solar Sollew". Clever eh?

However, knowing that Dr Seuss had passed away in 1991 I went off to find the origin of this poem and found the answer via Google at one of my favourite websites - Hoax-Slayer. (I might just add this to my links list while I think of it.)

The original poem is quite a bit longer and carries the Dr Seuss feel all the way through. However the poem was written in 1994 by Gene Ziegler. It can be found in it's entirety published online by the author on his Cornell University homepage. The poem is actually called "A Grandchild's Guide to Using Grandpa's Computer".

Then some bastard edited it, renamed it and re-attributed it to Dr Seuss - digital vandalism.

Apparently Gene was unimpressed and he tears some virtual shreds off his dastardly digital nemesis with a second poem entitled "Hang the Information Highwayman!" - also a good read knowing a little of the history behind it.

Of course this abridged version of the poem has been circulating by e-mail since 1995 and has probably had the title changed numerous times since it's original plagiarism. The e-mail I received had the acronym risc incorrectly spell corrected to risk and even thanks Bill Gates for supplying the experiences described in the poem, yet it was written about a Macintosh computer about a year before the release of Windows95.

So if you get this e-mail sent to you, be sure to let the sender know about the original. Not only for Gene's sake, but also for the readers, because the original poem in its entirety is simply a better read.

Environmental Terrorism

I read in my Google News today an article on The Australian news website with the headline:

Diverting water is an 'act of terror'

in which the Premier of South Australia said:

"...it's my view that anyone who is illegally involved in diverting water in the Murray-Darling system during this crisis is engaging in an act of terrorism against the people of Australia..."

-Premier of South Australia Mike Rann

While I understand that water is a precious resource that must be protected, I don't see how anyone taking water out of a river can be classed as a terrorist. Mr Rann is quoted using the 'T' word three times in this short artical - about once every three paragraphs!

Last time I checked we speak English here in Australia - it's similar to the English that they speak in England, not that crazy US English that seems to pollute every corner of the Internet - so I refer to the Oxford English Dictionary.

terrorist

• noun a person who uses violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

— DERIVATIVES terrorism noun.

That sounds right. Mr Rann doesn't seem to have used the word in it's correct context though. I wonder if it's a good idea for someone to lead when they don't really have a good grasp of the English language. It didn't go well for America.

Lets have a look at the headline which uses another very common term - 'Act of Terror'

terror

• noun 1 extreme fear. 2 a cause of terror. 3 the use of terror to intimidate people. 4 (also holy terror) informal a person causing trouble or annoyance.

— ORIGIN Latin, from terrere ‘frighten’.

I gotta say, the thought of someone throwing a pipe in a river and starting a pump doesn't make me fill my pants. I might be a bit upset, maybe a little angry if it was my pond or water tanks that are getting drained, but I wouldn't suffer from the extreme fear that you might get when a guy walks into your coffee shop with some kind of improvised explosive device strapped to their chest.

Just for the record Mr Rann, someone illegally involved in diverting water from any river is a criminal - not a terrorist.

Street View for Australia

Google Maps has launched street view. I was going to write a big story about it but I'm lazy and will instead just post this video from Google.



The photos aren't all that current but the 'wow' factor is still there. My place is too far off the beaten track to appear on street view but it's been quite interesting to go and have a look at places I havn't been to in years!

Track your Laptop

There is some free and open source software that can track your laptop with that may help you get it back in the event that it's stolen - provided, of course, that you had the software installed before it was stolen and the thief is stupid enough to connect to the Internet with it. It's very new software and is still being heavily developed, but a working version of it is available for Windows and Macs.

Adeona is named after the Roman goddess of safe returns. This system is the result of recent academic research started at the University of Washington, with participants now also at the University of California San Diego and the University of California Davis. The foundations of the Adeona design — and an analysis of its security and privacy properties — are published in a research paper at the 2008 USENIX Security Symposium.

-from the Adeona home page.

Did I mention it's free?