JOHO Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization ======================================== June 30, 1998 Editor: David Weinberger (self@evident.com) Please send subscription requests or modifications to self@evident.com. Or use our Sub/Unsub form at http://www.hyperorg.com/forms/form.html ======================================== For the fully glorious illustrated and hyperlink-saturated online version of JOHO, please visit: http://www.hyperorg.com/current/current.html ======================================== To view this issue correctly, please use a monospaced font such as Courier and stretch your window until it all makes sense. ----------------------------- CONTENTS -The Trouble with XML: 1. All hail XML, but we are about to see the Balkanization of standards...2. And here's something we can do about it. 3. We inevitably veer into the frivolous. -Devolving Definitions: All Hail Larry, for He hath brought forth NCs direct from his mighty forehead. -Why Search Engines Suck: Lycos takes a swing at this perennial question. -Walking the Walk: Subaru decentralizes its forecasting process via the Web. -Cool Tool: Fonts for the eye weary -Internetcetera: Web maintenance is vital and being outsourced. Also, are Americans slobs? A Dutch perspective. - Gartner on KM: CIOs may disagree about the value of KM, but they agree the name sucks. -Reader-Suggested Links: JOHO readers have a come up with a miscellany of interesting sites. -Email, Comments and Rude Remarks: The usual amazing mail from readers. -Bogus Contest: The JOHO Invitational. SPECIAL INTERVIEW ISSUE What seems like years ago, I interviewed Chris "RageBoy" Locke for Wired magazine. Upon reading the actual interview, they politely declined to publish it, entitling us to claim that this piece of work was just too hot for Wired! Wow! Chris recently published the interview as a special issue of his newsletter, EGR. EGR is itself, of course, too hot for Wired! I, however, still write with some frequency for Wired, entitling me to say that Wired is the finest magazine in the world and I completely agree with their decision not to publish that piece o' dreck interview. Good call, Wired guys! Not-Wired Interview: http://www.rageboy.com/cross-wired.html EGR: http://www.rageboy.com/index2.html ----------------- THE TROUBLE WITH XML 1. The XML Standard Wars are just beginning I was part of the XML front lash, so don't take this as an XML backlash. (Extra points: come up with a way I could work in a "backslash" pun.) Nevertheless, XML is going to be a big stinking mess. Now that the XML bandwagon is launched unstoppably and beyond recall, we need to get real clear real quickly about what it will and will not do for us. Oh, it will do everything it's advertised to do. Properly applied it will let us build Web applications that take advantage of the smartened documents XML allows. And it will let us navigate through documents more intelligently and do smarter searches. But as we attempt to take full advantage of XML, it's going to get very messy. That's because at its heart XML isn't simply a standard. It's a standard way of specifying a standard. XML lets a document author specify a set of tags that make sense for the content of that document. So, instead of having to tag every numbered list as "
    " because you want to get an indented, numbered list, you might specify some sections as "Tool_List" and some as "Instructions" and some as "Check_List." Or whatever. Then the application that looks at your XML page can do interesting things with that information -- like show you a list of all the tools required, or build an interactive check list that gets uploaded into some master server. Or whatever. The "or whatevers" are the strength of XML ... and its biggest problem. In order for an application to make sense of the tags in a particular XML document, it has to know ahead of time what to do with them. When I use my ordinary HTML browser to look at your XML document, it's not going to know that a "Tool_List" has anything to do with tools. I will instead need a special application that someone has written specifically to deal with that particular tag set. (Maybe the application will be delivered with the XML document via Java. Maybe not.) Suppose you want to mark up your page with XML so that the Web search engines can do smart searching on it. You want to be able to tell the search engines that the language is English, that the topic is water snakes, that the information on the page will be out of date by next March and that it shouldn't be looked at by people who are afraid of reptiles. You can create some XML metadata tags to capture all that information -- but so what? Alta Vista doesn't know what your tags mean, and neither does Hotbot, Infoseek, or Excite (not to mention Lycos). Or suppose you're Microsoft and you're making it possible to save Word documents in XML. (This isn't idle speculation, by the way.) You need to create tags that capture tons of information that is specific to Word, such as tab styles, index tokens, footnote styles, etc. The result will be a large, complex DTD (document type definition, which includes the set of permissible tags) for Word XML -- what some have called "Word_ML" (a witticism I first heard from Dan Bricklin although he gave credit to someone else). And when WordPerfect and Lotus and whatever save as XML, we'll have WordPerfect_ML and Lotus_ML ... and a million other MLs, including SAP_ML, Quicken_ML, Mom_and_Pop_ML, and ButtScratch_ML. Will the world be a better place? We'll be able to create smarter applications because XML will give us smarter documents. But we are headed towards the Balkanization of standards in which each person has her own standard or -- worse yet -- set of standards. So bring on the XML and hasten its proliferation. But don't think life is suddenly going to get easier. In a twist on the law of entropy, we are tending towards a chaotic system of micro-order. 2. The Tags We Search By To avoid the pitfalls of Balkanization, we need to agree on some common tags, if only so we can do "smart" searching. That means we want all our Web pages to be marked up with tags for the different types of metadata on which we search. It's not hard to come up with a useful list. And JOHO isn't the first to think of it. In fact, we're just about the last. The OCLC (Online Computer Library Center, Inc.) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications convened a workshop in Dublin, Ohio in 1995 to address just this issue. The aim was: ...to achieve consensus on a list of metadata elements that would yield simple descriptions of data in a wide range of subject areas, and to lay the groundwork for further progress in defining metadata elements that describe electronic information. They came up with the following list of metadata useful for finding pages (and I quote): * Subject: The topic addressed by the work * Title: The name of the object * Author: The person(s) primarily responsible for the intellectual content of the object * Publisher: The agent or agency responsible for making the object available * OtherAgent: The person(s), such as editors and transcribers, who have made other significant intellectual contributions to the work * Date: The date of publication * ObjectType: The genre of the object, such as novel, poem, or dictionary * Form: The physical manifestation of the object, such as Postscript file or Windows executable file * Identifier: String or number used to uniquely identify the object * Relation: Relationship to other objects * Source: Objects, either print or electronic, from which this object is derived, if applicable * Language: Language of the intellectual content * Coverage: The spatial locations and temporal durations characteristic of the object This became known as "The Dublin Core," which passes the Pretty Cool Name test but nevertheless has failed to catch on. But as XML proliferates, having standards for structuring and searching documents will become even more important. We're likely to see local standards emerge for particular document types in particular industries. But having some universal tags would be enormously helpful. Why hasn't this caught on? Don't give me the old chicken-and-egg malarkey about needing both the authoring packages and the search sites to support it. The point about the chicken-and-egg story is that we have chickens. In fact, we have too many chickens. (As a vegetarian, I am not suggesting you up your chicken consumption. No, I have a dream of one day restoring to our vast prairies the flocks of feral chickens that once covered the red dust like a single squawking, smelly, flightless evolutionary mistake.) Imagine that Yahoo! and Microsoft were to announce that from now on, you'll be able to search using the attributes like those in the Dublin Core. Imagine Alta Vista or Hotbot were to join in. Given the enormous imperative to have your pages found (we are increasingly like the fly in the eponymous movie squeaking "Find me! Find me!"), we'd flock to this new de facto standard like smelly, flightless evolutionary mistakes. Just a thought. 3. Beyond Dublin By the way, there are other attributes we'd probably want to capture beyond what's in the Dublin Core, including: Description Copyright info Date written Date Posted Best if used by Recommended age level Combined tonnage of included graphics Price per view Print publishers who rejected this page Contains phrase "paradigm shift"? Number of Pam Anderson JPGs Number of attacks by RageBoy JOHO is accepting contributions on this important topic... ------- Links (Ignore line breaks, of course! Or go to the hyperlinked version at: http://www.hyperorg.com/current/current.html About the Dublin Core: http://www.oclc.org/oclc/research/publications/revie w95/part2/weibel.htm XML resource center http://www.xml.com About the W3C namespace proposal: http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/WD-xml-names-19980327 To see an XML romance bloom: http://www.scripting.com/98/03/stories/lisasSong.htm l ----------------- DEVOLVING DEFINITIONS™ DEPT. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, was interviewed in PC Week (May 25): PC Week: Have you tempered your projections for NC (network computer) growth? Ellison: There are a number of [research] companies that forecast, by the year 2008 or something like that, network computers will outnumber PCs 10 to 1 PC Week: Is that a generic term they're using for "NC"? Ellison: Yes. An NC is a computer that runs an Internet browser, that allows you through HTTP to get at Internet services. That's all it is. While you're enjoying Ellison trying to squirm out of the utter wrongness of his earlier projections of the success of NCs, don't forget to notice the great confidence with which Larry quotes "a number" of research companies that are projecting out to the year 2008 (or something like that). Given the way he has redefined NC, what those projections really mean is that in the year 2008, 90% of computers will be able to browse the web. Sounds like a conservative estimate to me! Not content with magically causing all Web-ready computers to become NCs, Ellison now takes credit for this year's dramatic drop in the price of computers Ellison: An interesting thing has happened since we first started talking about $500 network computers: ... PC pricing has dropped to under $800. PC Week: And you attribute that to the evolution of the NC concept? Ellison: I don't know why else they've dropped quite so fast. Foolish me! I thought the price drop had something to do with the dramatic drop in the cost of component pieces due primarily to competitive pressures and oversupplies. Little did I realize it was because Larry Mighty Ellison had declared that from this day NCs would go forth. Larry, for the sake of all that's good and just, could you please invent the concept of the FC, the free computer? And also the WPC, the world peace computer. Not to call these forth through the power of your thought would be a sin. ----------------- WHY SEARCH ENGINES SUCK A couple of issues ago, we reported on the bad articles written about the study in Science magazine that showed that search engines sites only index about a third of the Web at best. Hotbot weighed in with 34% and Lycos anchored the list with 3%. Now, in CIO Web Business (June 1), Rajive Mathur, senior product manager at Lycos, tries to put a good spin on it. He says: Our goal is to look at what users are looking at and give them that. We have an editorial group and technological group working to decide which answers are relevant. Why should we give people more results? Our studies show that 93% of the people want fewer results, and 85% never go beyond the third page of results. The fact that people want fewer results does not mean that your search engine needs to look at only 3% of the available pages (as Lycos does). What people really want is a site that's looked at a lot of the Web and which then winnows the results so what they're looking for shows up on the first page of results. What does "a lot of the Web" mean? I dunno, but I suspect it's somewhere above 3%. BTW, let me give Mr. Mathur a little marketing lesson, free o' charge. The right way to put the 85% figure is "85% of our users find what they need within the first thirty results!" Sure, we know that most are leaving because they think page 4 isn't going to be any better than page 3, but we're talking marketing here, man! ------------- David Stephenson forwarded an Information Week (June 1) article that covers many of the themes in theory covered in JOHO (until you -- yes, you -- forced it to become a frigging comedy rag instead of a deep-thinkin', plain-speakin', truck-drivin' Webby-business prognosticatorium). I'd give you the direct link to the article, but it doesn't work. Here's what David sent me, which worked until recently: http://www.techweb.com/se/linkthru.cgi?IWK19980601S0 046 I was unable to re-locate this article using the site's search engine even though we know: AUTHOR: Noah Shachtman TITLE: Group Think -- Employees are shattering the traditional corporate structure with intranets MAGAZINE: Information Week PUB DATE: June 1, 1998 FULL TEXT OF FIRST PARAGRAPH: Not long ago, intranets seemed little more than vehicles for disseminating information from corporate headquarters. Now, at forward-thinking organizations such as Ernst & Young, Xerox, and MCI, their real potential is beginning to take shape: Employees are using intranets to band together in far-flung groups of need and expertise that defy traditional corporate structure. No, that's just not enough metadata for the CMP search engine. Apparently we also need to know the article's width in pixels, its mother's maiden name, and the author's pet name for his weenie. I did, finally, find it again by plugging some text from the first paragraph into Hotbot. It's at: http://techweb.cmp.com/iw/684/84iugrp.htm Aaarrgh. I defy you to find this by using the search engines at either the CMP or Information Week site: http://www.cmp.com http://www.informationweek.com ------------- A search on Hotbot, the volume leader, for "Windows stinks" in the past three months turns up only 3 entries, and "Windows95 stinks" turns up zero. That can't be right... -------------------- MIDDLE WORLD RESOURCES: A COMPENDIUM OF RESOURCES COOL TOOL FOR THE HYPERLINKED ORGANIZATION At the risk of not being hyperlinky cool enough, let me recommend a trip through Ziff-Davis's library of font downloads. You'll find some updated standards as well as some new ones that swing wildly between being easier on the eyes and hav ing imp act (= "looking cool, man"). Sure, these days we're not supposed to worry about publishing nits like fonts. But a good font is like a good mood. Oh my lord, what have I become? Share the fontasy here: http://www.hotfiles.com/graphics/fonts.html (You can also test your font knowledge by visiting the JOHO home page.) --- WALKING THE WALK InternetWeek (June 8) reports that Subaru is moving its forecasting process on to the Web. This has the obvious benefit of letting the organization be more flexible as markets change. For example, while it's predictable that the snow plow option for convertibles will sell better in Wisconsin than in Georgia, tastes vary and fluctuate from city to city. (Who could have predicted the demand in The Hamptons for cars with extra long, pointy hood ornaments? Well, you could have if you had been following the craze for full body piercing last summer.) The move will also have the not-quite-so-obvious (but less-than-startling) effect of distributing power away from central headquarters and out to the regional managers who will be able to react to the forecasts, fine tuning them as required at Web speed. There's a four-month lead time for ordering cars from the factory. Subaru plans on using the Web to parcel out the cars to dealers more efficiently since market conditions may have changed by the time the cars are driven off the ship by their platoon of defrocked valet parking attendants. (If Subaru's new-found webbinness inspires you to buy one of their cars, please check Edmunds first: http://www.edmunds.com/edweb/reviews.html ---- INTERNETCETERA This issue's Net factoid is dedicated to the improbably named Christel van der Boom who maintained in a conversation recently that Americans dress rather formally in offices, while we are complete slobs outside of the office. This is in comparison to Ms. van der Boom's native Netherlands which -- as we all know -- has long been the world fashion leader (which is why you can't hardly pry the wooden shoes off of today's top supermodels). Au contraire! A recent survey by Christian & Timbers in Clevland found that 40% of job candidates show up for interviews in casual attire. You see, Americans are slobs all the time! (You can read my interviewing tips in my recently published book Putting Nudism to Work for You (with a foreword by Clarence Thomas). The nude workplace is happening. You read it here first...) ----------- In a totally unrelated study, Forrester Research did a study of outsourcing cited in CIO Web Business (June 1): Function % Outsourced Site design 80% Coding and scripting 82% Content creation 44% Content management 44% Systems management 42% Strategic planning 36% Why they outsource so much of this supposedly strategic asset: Reason % No staff 73% No technical resources 64% No expertise 55% Easier 16% More cost efficient 14% So, it's harder and more expensive to outsource these functions, but they do it anyway instead of staffing up. Does IT think this whole Web/intranet thing is going to blow over and they don't want a bunch of people with Web skills sitting around drinking latte and playing Quake? ---------------- GARTNER ON KM A recent Gartner Report reports gartnerially that in research conducted on CIOs (involving sodium pentathol, eyelash clamps and liquid nitrogen, or at least we hope), the subjects were reluctant to recommend anything called "knowledge management" because it basically doesn't mean anything, although they see value in the general subject area. ("If you had any knowledge, do you think it'd be good to manage it, or what?" "Um, yeah, sure. You said there'd be hors d'oeuvres.") Among leading contenders for replacement terms, the CIOs favored "knowledge sharing" and "knowledge networking." Apparently, "knowledge knowing" and "Send your knowledge to college" -- the leading contenders among JOHO staffers -- didn't even make it onto the list. [Thanks and a tip o' the hat to Steven Birnam for passing this tidbit along.] -------------------- READER-SUGGESTED LINKS A number of readers have suggested some links: David Hitchcock, a London-based JOHO reader, has a very useful site for those interested in electronic publishing and documents: http://www.pira.co.uk/IE ------------- Joshua Newman has a bunch of links to interesting material about the importance of metaphors: http://metaphor.uoregon.edu/metaphor.html http://www.bell-labs.com/people/cope http://www.netspace.org/~erica/m4/intro.html http://www.desk.nl/~acsi/WS/themes/metacc.htm ------------- Greg Cavanagh, my scholar-athlete nephew doing research on how to build a brain out of Linux, sends these "awesome linux links": The MIT AI lab http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/ The COG project http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cog/ Greg notes that: they have their own resident philosopher (Daniel Dennett, who, for my money, wins the "Clever Boy Award for Contemporary Philosophers"). http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cog/Text/people-index .html Look for an upcoming article from Greg on why Linux will beat Windows (well, why it ought to, anyway) as part of our continuing ignoring of the Linux phenomenon. ------------- Larry Fitzpatrick sends along a proposal for a new standard: "HTCPCP, a protocol for controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing coffee pots" : http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/coffee.txt The fact that this proposal is dated April 1 is probably just a coincidence. ------------- Continuing the weird cross-fertilization of EGR and JOHO, Chris RageBoy Locke passes along a great URL suggested by one of his readers: http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/svtmain.html This is a very funny fortune telling site using the official Silicon Valley Tarot deck. ------------------------ EMAIL, COMMENTS, SUGGESTED LIFESTYLES There has been a tremendous amount of email since the last issue, some small percentage of it not from coeds who assure me that I am essential to their fulfillment as women (credit cards accepted). The special issue on the role of metaphors really seemed to beat the old epistolary carpet, if you know what I mean (if you don't, just guess...to yourself) resulting in a special special issue already sitting in your discard pile. So, here's mail that isn't about metaphors. Special special issue: www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-june21-98.html -------- Riding on the startling popularity of The Truman Show, let's begin with a recent JOHO triumph. In the previous issue, we whined that conference sessions generally probe and we look forward to the day when instead of seeing three marketing guys giving sequential twenty-minute drone-fests which have been known to cause audience members to chew off their own feet in order to escape, conference sessions will take their cue from TV. No sooner said than done. Andy Moore, editor of KMWorld (full disclosure: I've been known to write drone-fest columns for KMWorld) writes: Hold onto your powder brush and get ready for your close up. This from the July Summit's agenda-in-progress: "The KM Show" Unique to the KMWorld Industry Leadership Summit, this two-hour mixed-media show is designed in 'variety/chat show' format. Interviews with Industry notables from both sides of the analyst/vendor fence, in an attempt to learn more about their work, their enterprises and a little about them personally. Think Letterman meets Charlie Rose." JOHO takes full-blush credit for this although apparently Stowe Boyd (a JOHO reader) had suggested this to Andy before we did. You know, being first doesn't make you better, Stowe! Just ask Microsoft. Andy then goes on to compare JOHO to Tallulah Bankhead, the gravel-voice Ur-Lesbian of the 30s-50s, for reasons I cannot -- and wish not -- to contemplate. Um, thanks, Andy. KMWorld conference: http://www.kmworld.com/summit -------- A very feisty Gerry Murray of IDC responds to our article on the future of displays: and the crapfest continues. see comments below. If you haven't upgraded to the latest plasma gas 128 billion color display system, you might not be able to discern that my comments are sprinkled in below in blue and you might therefore find yourself reading the whole thing over again, possibly motivating you to reconsider the $12,000 price tag as pretty damn reasonable after all. I know just how you feel, Gerry. Everytime I see a 52" TV for $7,000 and I think it's going to cost us more than that to reshingle our house and the reshingling advances our lifestyle not one frigging inch, I get sort of cranky also. But it seems that the flat panel prices are dropping. And the microdisplay prices are considerably less than that -- they should be about $50-100 per chip (for OEMs) in the next 18 months. (And remember that the microdisplays can be used to project large images and will be used for at least some of the wide-screen high definition televisions we'll see on the market next year.) -------- Gerry's got some comments on KM also: I know you've been over the context thing. But here's the beef. KM is really about marrying the old information management stuff with context management. (And no, without robust context capabilities your DM, or imaging, or push or scanner product is not KM and has no business being marketed or evaluated as such.) While this sounds like a truism, in reality it places enormous new demands on IT and orgs to somehow infuse a new flexibility into what are often highly sedentary architectures. For instance, the real model for KM is the digital fish tank. It's survival of the fittest objects, except it more like the fittest objects get the most air time, more than their allotted 15 minutes of fame. But the objects themselves must rise to the occasion by incorporating attributes not only about themselves but about their environments. What is the object, what does it contain, where does it reside, who created it, when was it created or updated, what version is it? All these have counterparts from an environmental perspective. When did it prove useful, to whom, in what department, what other objects were also used, do certain objects trigger value for others, what was the outcome of the usefulness? I think there's a lot more to this. Especially since it has broad implications for existing technologies and requires innovation that is not yet on the market. This, therefore, is a model that provides value to the market, it is forward looking and hopefully both motivational and inspirational to customers and suppliers. I'm motivated! I'm inspired! Bring on the knowledge objects! But the harder part will be -- as I think Gerry agrees -- managing the context in which these smart little woodland folk live and act; you can't resolve the context into the sum of the knowledge objects. Notice, by the way, Gerry's introduction of a new (or at least different) metaphor: an environmental or ecological perspective on knowledge. Let's see, what does that make JOHO: smog, waste dump or nuclear accident? The context thing: http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-feb4-98.html -------- Kevin Johansen responds to last issue's article on the coming of truly portable, high res displays: I like the wrap around monitor idea. Very geek chic. 'Who's that behind those Displaytechs?' But does this mean that I get to carry the CPU in a backpack? If so, please tell me that MS/Intel are partnering up with Tamagatchi or something. Or will I just have a very long cable to worry about? And if so, how will I see it if I'm wearing the monitor? Will this help or hurt my astigmatism? And what about my dyslexia? And don't get me started about my ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder]... Let me answer your questions one at a time: (1) The CPU will be the size of a deck of cards (= Palm Pilot) and can be directly inserted in several different orifices (hint: manufacturers are recommending using pockets). (2) A design aim for the head mounted displays is to make sure you can see over, under or through them. (3) Yes, it will miraculously cure astigmatism. Unfortunately, in curing astigmatisms, it induces their opposite: stigmata. (4) An option randomly scrambles the letters in order to give dyslexics a fighting chance. (5) And, as with most things having to do with computers, the best way to understanding this new technology is as a form of Artificial ADD. Kevin adds: Plus, wasn't all of this ('This' being the Information Age, Apologies to Peter Drucker ...) invented already by William Gibson? I think everything you've included in this post was implied and forever after assumed by the second paragraph of 'Neuromancer'. Yes, of course. Everything is already in Neuromancer. Our job as editors is simply to recycle that stuff. Your job as a reader is to pretend like you've never heard of it before. If we all do our jobs, this will work out splendidly. ------------- Larry Fitzpatrick has a different worry about the prospect of attaching these displays to one's eyeglasses: ... we genetically well-endowed that need not wear specs will become the visually challenged... unaware of with whom we're talking, when we last met, the speed of that bird that just flew past, the 15sec price quote on our employer's stock, the e-nvitation to the latest happening pahty... imagine. to be without glasses is to be socially retro... nyah, nyah, na-na, nah, two-eyes, two-eyes... Very funny, Larry, but I know I speak for a substantial segment of the male population when I say that I have trouble getting past any message that begins by claiming that the writer is "genetically well-endowed". Too damn distracting. -------- Gerard Van der Leun is set off by my comment in the previous issue: "..a spokesmodel not a spokesperson. There's a big difference." Like what? Big hooters and a skimpy little Nazi costume? Hey, subscribe me to your page. Interesting. Of course the "Submit Me" button gives me a file not found error, but hey nobody's perfect. Well, of course the "Submit Me" button didn't work for you. My page uses advanced Java scripting to sense -- by how hard you press the buttons -- those with sado-masochistic tendencies ("big hooters and skimpy little Nazi costumes"?) and to deny them the pleasure of pressing a "Submit me" button. All part of the delicious pain of JOHO. -------- Web Philosopher Michael Heim responds to the plug of his book in the special issue: You should know that Electric Language is coming out in Spring 1999 in a second edition, with a preface by David Gelernter (Yale computer scientist, inventor of the Linda language, and Unabomb victim). There's a resume for you! Electric Language: http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/books/amazon.html#heim -------- We got a surprising number of letters on the Dutch Question (i.e., how can the taxi drivers at the Amsterdam airport tell I'm American even before I've said a word?) raised in the previous issue. John Pyke theorizes: I don't know the Dutch answer but it happens to Brits as well - my guess is that Dutch taxi drivers all have Masters Degrees in marketing and figure that by the law of averages any one coming out of the airport is more likely to speak English than Dutch - so you are happy to get into a cab where the driver speaks English (unlike New York) - if by some fluke you (the Airport exitor)happen to be Dutch, it is also likely that you will also speak English so it won't matter - you will understand the driver. Ah, Pascal's Wager applied to cab fares! Anyone care to apply the Ontological Argument to this problem? Avram Goodblatt writes: You will rarely get to know a Dutch person really well - they guard their privacy. After all, it's a small country with lots of people. They get invaded. So part of the friendliness is their camouflage so that you'll visit and leave. And they believe that they speak English better than you - after all, they were trained in Oxford English, we just speak something called American... The Dutch pride themselves on being VERY aware of what goes on in the rest of the world, which isn't a bad trait. ... It's very important for them to figure out quickly if you are an American or a German. They have a history of being traders and its important for a trader to identify his market. {Americans aren't so much traders as salesmen) Mike Oliver has a different, simpler theory: I suspect that you were identified as American either because you are ugly or because you did not check out the bike rack as you exited the building. Well, I definitely checked out the bike rack... D'oh! Finally, Australian Ron has an explanation embedded in one of his remarkably fluid emails (from which it is usually just about impossible to excerpt passages): On the Dutch issue, with note to some of the truly exceptional Nederlanders I have known, might I suggest it was your assumption of them as humane and tolerant that immediately exposed you as an outsider ... Ouch, there's a world of pain in that remark! And much of it is likely to be Ron's next time he goes to Holland. Pascal's Wager: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathemat icians/Pascal.html -------- Robert Morse, in a bid to join the JOHO Checker Board, takes issue with the sentence: "This refers to our recent meal in a Vietnamese restaurant in Boulder which Chris dragged me to. " Should be: "This refers to our recent meal in a Vietnamese restaurant in Boulder to which Chris dragged me." Thought I'd pick your nit. Sorry, Robert, but I have declared independence -- after many years of servitude -- from the reign of split infinitives and sentence-ending-prepositions, rules for their own sake. In other words, this is a nit about which I refused to be picked. You're gonna have to do beetter to get ontwo the Checker Bored. [Hint: I have, as always, carefuly sprinkled grammatical and spelling "mistakes" throughout this issue just to test your mettle. Can you find them??!] -------- Tony McKinley, noticing that the special issue claims to be as boring as a philosophy course, writes: With regard to philosophy courses, I only took one - Existentialism. At the end the teacher told us all to give ourselves whatever grade we think we deserved. I gave myself a B, while most peopled aced that class. Tony, I've taught courses on existentialism and I can tell you that your teacher had it all wrong. The only ones who pass a self-graded existentialism are the ones who commit suicide. Learn to play the game, man! He continues by hearkening back (can you hearken forward?) to an earlier discussion of petabytes: I switched over to Asian Studies, where the books were much more interesting. Like the Bhagavad Gita, the Diamond Sutra, yada yada. Those guys would be right at home in our mega ... giga ... tera ... peta ... expanding universe. They had a measurement of time called a kalpa, which was the amount of time it would take if a hawk dangling a silk thread flew over a mountain once every thousand years; the time it would take to wear down a granite mountain one thousand miles high, wide and long by the thread brushing over it once every thousand years. A long, but strictly defined amount of time. I smell a bogus contest in here somewhere: new units of measurement for the Web. I'll kick it off: A mot: The amount of time it would take an untrained monkey to find the downloadable drivers on the Motorola page (= less time than it would take a Web-aware human being). Motorola page: http://www.mot.com -------- Philip Randall, noticing a JOHO article about appliances going on the Web, sends an article (from the Electronic Telegraph, 14 Aug 1997) about machines armed with phones running amok. Reportedly, more than 8,000 people a month were pestered by wrongly-programmed machines trying to report faults to their operators in the past year. Well, sure, and whenever there's a low pressure system I hear a voice in my head urging me to feed a machine in Sunbury, PA with Zagnut bars, but you don't hear me whining about it. -------- Greg Cavanagh points to a recent article in the NY Times Magazine (AKA "The Sunday Killer") on "Humankind's Battle for Scrabble Supremacy": The NY Times sponsored a 50th anniversary championship match between a computer and a team of two world champion scrabble players. The computer won the best of 11 series. What's the big deal? Computers have been beating us at tic-tac-toe for decades. And, in a sense, they always beat us at virtual pinball as well -- the ball always goes down the hole eventually. But will computers will ever beat us at not convicting O.J.? I don't think so! ------------------------------ BOGUS CONTEST: THE JOHO INVITATIONAL Having been in the freelance writing business for a while, I can promise you that nothing sells like a good title. As you scrounge for topics to pitch to editors, you begin to hallucinate titles hoping that some actual content will attach itself to one of them. I've been experiencing the same thing while writing for JOHO. Here are some rejected titles for JOHO articles: Is the Web Gay? Learning from Pornography No Thyself The Day the Hippies Lost the Web The Web Transporter: Now You Can Be in Two Places at Once Unfortunately, as far as I can tell none of these suffer the burden of meaningfulness. Challenge #1: Submit a one-paragraph précis of the article that goes with one of those headlines. Winners may be invited to write the article itself for a future issue of JOHO. Challenge #2: Conversely, submit more potential headlines for JOHO articles. Remember, at the Bogus Contest, To Enter Is To Win™. ----------------------------- EDITORIAL LINT The following information was found trapped at the top of my washing machine when I ran some issues of the JOHO through it. JOHO is a free, independent newsletter written and produced by David Weinberger. He denies responsibility for any errors or problems. If you write him with corrections or criticisms, it will probably turn out to have been your fault. To subscribe or be removed from the JOHO mailing list, send email to self@evident.com. There is no need for harshness or recriminations. Sometimes things just don't work out between people. Dr. Weinberger is in a delicate nervous state, but if you want to send positive comments to him, his email address is self@evident.com. Dr. Weinberger is represented by a fiercely aggressive legal team who responds to any provocation with massive litigatory procedures. This notice constitutes fair warning. Any email sent to the JOHO may be published in JOHO and snarkily commented on unless the email explicitly states that it's not for publication. -------- The Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization is a publication of Evident Marketing, Inc. "The Hyperlinked Organization" is trademarked by Open Text Corp. Information on preemptive trademarks™™ can be found at http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/trademarks.html.