jenett.radio

Friday, September 13, 2002

mahvelous miscellany...

And there's always room for yet another MS security flaw [MyFreePress.com]

9:19:14 PM

An interesting question (on the smiley, of course)

Katy & Bruce pick up on the smiley news here (and at CNET as well) and ask: "Does that mean 'Special to CNET News.com' is misleading if they posted this morning at 5:36 AM GMT-8 without any attribution besides the microsoft link?" They posted at 3:39 PM GMT-5, which makes me think they had read only my first post about smiley. Without seeing that I had also made reference to "Special to CNET News.com" in my second post, I think a similar question occurred to them as to me. What a great segue to make a point.

I don't think that citing sources is a question of right or wrong. Is it misleading not to cite sources? I don't think so. But does it affect credibility? How does the reader interpret a lack of attribution? If there is a point to all of this fun I'm having today following "smiley" around, it's that I'm always curious how a news item (in this case, the document at the Microsoft research site), travels through the web. Face it - how many people actually read the Microsoft research site? My curiousity wants to know if Microsoft contacted the news media (or did a press release) or if the media actually finds a lot of its content by looking for it on the web, just like little bloggers like me. Are they visiting places like Slashdot, or even smaller weblogs, for the scoop? You've got to admit - it's an interesting question.

4:17:49 PM

following the bouncing "smiley" (part 2)...

I missed Gregory Blake's posting of the news item this morning at 8:47 AM GMT-5. "Everything comes from Pittsburgh" he says. "Why does it not surprise me in the least that it came from CMU?" Gregory picked up on it from a friend's LJ (LiveJournal, I think).

Also, First "smiley" shows its face appeared as a "Special to CNET News.com" at 5:36 AM GM-8 this morning. Wonder what the "special" phrase means - hit me with your source, Matt Looney (the author) - when I grow up, I wanna be like CNET (just kidding).

The CNET article does lead to a related can o' worms. "When Ray Tomlinson sent the first e-mail 30 years ago, he didn't think enough of his achievement to record the message or the date."

But wait. The story keeps growing. Jonathan Peterson read about it at b0ingb0ing at 10:09 AM GMT-5 and it reminded him of something. Yay! More link path goodness. Seems that Johnathan waged a funny campaign against the smiley about 5 years ago while attempting to popularize ass-icons. I swear I'm not making it up.

And speaking of b0ingb0ing, it looks like Cory's on the case. At 9:07AM GMT-8, he shared his discovery of a gallery of even older emoticons from the 1970s-era PLATO system.

Wowee zowee!

3:20:15 PM

follow the bouncing

Aren't timelines/link paths/cast of characters for any given news item fascinating? Last night at 11:22 PM GMT-5, Curtis Burns pointed to Slashdot | The First Smiley :-) (posted at 10:31 PM GMT-5) by Timothy which points to a document dated 9/12/02 about "the original message in which the smiley was invented" having been recovered on 9/10/02 from a backup tape from 1982 (from the Carnegie Melon University CS general bboard) by Jeff Baird as part of Microsoft researcher Mike Jones' effort to find the lost message. The original message was a posted on 9/19/82 by one Scott E. Fahlman who invented our little friend, the smiley. Scott has his own page on Smiley Lore :-). Now add me to the cast of characters if you don't mind - the smiley was invented on my 32nd birthday - cool. Next week as I turn 52 and check to make sure nothing falls off (fighting urge to insert a smiley here), our friendly smiley will be celebrating its 20th year anniversary. Now, add few related links from the post at Slashdot:

Dead Media Project | More on It's funny. Laugh. | Also by timothy

So far, so good. This morning at 9:33 AM GMT, John Lettice, author of First ever smiley found, preserved for posterity (The Register), remarks "And isn't it a blessing to find Microsoft Research staff keeping themselves profitably occupied like this, when they could be posing a threat to world freedom instead?" I'm inclined to insert the other emoticon Scott invented - you know - the one with the "(" at the end, but I won't. Obviously, just intelligent humor that soared over my head. Ah - a question arises here. What was John's source? Does he read Slashdot? Or better yet, does he read A Blander Blog? Maybe John is a regular reader of Microsoft research - yeah, right.

But there's more. This morning at 6:45 AM GMT-8, Cory Doctorow points to the Microsoft research article, too. Cory's real good at citing/thanking sources and the lack of attributions makes me think that Cory might have bumped into the article while surfing the web. Then again, maybe he bumped into it at Slashdot. Who knows? But, now I can't help but wonder if John at The Register reads the b0ingb0ing blog. I know it's getting silly, but questions like this really do fascinate me as a single news item gets amplified in my aggregator.

There's more cast members with opinions as well. Jeremy Hedley picks up on the item today at 11:43 PM GMT+9, stating "I always thought words expressed emotion in plain text, but maybe I'm just old-fashioned. Remember, kids: use smileys sparingly." By now, the mind starts getting boggled by all these different time zones. The urge to wonder where Jeremy originally found the news item is tempered by an equal urge to stop having to calculate what time it really is for each of the possible sources.

Dan Rosenbaum adds his voice today at 12:16 PM GMT-5: "Given the transient nature of so much online content, it's actually a pretty impressive feat of archeology." He read it at The Register. No more questions, additional link paths, or cast members... for now, that is. :-)

2:45:36 PM

Virtual OM

>> Talk about flashbacks - I could swear I'd seen it before, in fact, I could swear I'd already reviewed it, but that was just a dream (or was it?)... [Coolstop Daily Pick 9/13/02]

Thanks again Richard...

12:02:57 PM