Language

I've always thought of Instagram as another photosharing site, but not a place where the users post pictures of cats and their credit cards. Given that I'm not a fan of posting every photo I might have taken to the 'net at large, I hadn't signed up for an account there.

"...or, press the star key to the left of the zero"

Out of the blue, that struck me as odd. ...to the left of the...., I puzzled.

I guess that you could say the pound/hash/number sign looks like a star pattern. Might be cultural differences: I don't know for certain. A bilingual government sometimes does strange things.

For you trivia buffs: it has many different names, including Octothorpe

I was waiting at the Honda dealership the other day, and reluctantly picked up the copy of the Metro News there after having read the other papers. Several pages in, there's a column by a fellow named Paul Sullivan called A massive effort to create a giant nerd.

With every new Internet explorer release, Microsoft makes many statements concerning their 'commitment to the web'. It's not true. While reading a TechCrunch story, the computer program that everyone refers to as 'Internet Explorer' or 'IE' iswas called Microsoft Internet Explorer. That's fine: it's a bit long-winded, but it's fine to put the name of the company that makes it in the name of the software.

I'm not normally one to talk politics, and I regard it as distasteful (and annoying!) to deal with, but I do pay attention. Harper might have solace in his minority-majority, but eventually he's going to annoy enough people as to discredit the Conservatives -- much like the Liberal party has now -- for many years to come.

I've been slowly moving all of my registered domains away from domainsatcost.ca over the past year. Why? There are several reasons:

• Irony poisoning: $13.45 is not 'at cost' by any means. 10dollar.ca is cheaper, less annoying, and has a better interface
• Big Irritations: you can't register a domain name for more than a year at a time. Whenever you perform any transaction, you get a 50 cent fee added to the total for the 'privilege' of using your credit card. Um, why?

The Death of the Written Language

Can I aks a question?

What do you want for Xmas?

What's become of the written language these days? Am I one of the last to care that if I type like a moron, people will believe I'm a moron? How hard is it to use capitals and punctuation,

Irrelevance

Side note: This was originally going to be the last part in the series. Because of an email I received about a week ago, I've been inspired to create a fourth part in the series. At the rate of language degeneration, who knows how many parts there might be?

I remember reading somewhere that 'in order to appeal to the widest audience possible', your blog should be at the Junior High level or below.

Well, guess what...

The Omni-word

In every era there's a catch-all label that doesn't really mean anything. But meaning is independent of power, and of perceived meaning.

"The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force."